U.S. Electronics Turns up Heat in XM-Sirius Merger
U.S. Electronics is trying to heat up two issues in FCC review of the proposed XM-Sirius merger. In a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the company demanded that the agency release documents U.S. Electronics says may show what happened to interoperable radio and unlawful emissions issues raised but not addressed. “These records are urgently required to fill in glaring gaps in the FCC’s record in the proposed merger,” said Charles Helein, U.S. Electronics counsel.
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U.S. Electronics seeks material on the disposition of a July petition for declaratory ruling about interoperable radios. U.S. Electronics didn’t file the petition, whose originator the company didn’t name in its FOIA request. But since the petition hasn’t been put on public notice nor has the agency otherwise sought comment on it, U.S. Electronics wants to know what happened to it.
U.S. Electronics has concerns about the device emission violation proceedings. In June 2006 XM and Sirius stopped shipping plug-and-play devices found to be over the power limits (CD June 23/06 p8) but it isn’t known if any specific enforcement action was taken, the company said.
Separately, “a review of Sirius’s confidential documents produced in this case reveals that Sirius and XM uniquely constrain each other’s prices and commercial minutes,” said an economic consultant for the Consumer Coalition for Competition in Satellite Radio. Gregory Sidak of Criterion Economics was responding to a XM-Sirius-sponsored study by CRA. Consumers would be better off if the two satellite radio operators kept competing, Sidak said. “Prices, channel lineups, and commercial minutes would be determined by competitive factors rather than regulatory fiat,” he said.
Meanwhile, the National Council of Negro Women added its voice to calls for the FCC to set aside capacity for minority programming. The proposed satellite radio network merger “poses a clear, present and unmitigated threat to decency and greater diversity in media ownership,” wrote Dorothy Height, National Council of Negro Women president emerita. Height cited Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony, and Bubba the Love Sponge as specimens of radio personality that “help to perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes in our culture.”