Merger News: XM and Sirius Announce Tiered Subscription Plans

Recently, XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio announced several post-merger subscription plans. While it's good to finally have some idea of what will happen regarding subscriptions when and if the merger goes through, these plans leave me wondering if the merger is really as good for the subscriber as Mel Karmazin and Gary Parsons would have us believe.

Currently, a subscription to either satellite radio service is $12.95 per month for the first radio. Each service offers family plans, adding subscribers to add additional radios at a discounted monthly rate per radio. Keep that in mind as we take a look at these plans and see what they offer versus the cost of a current subscription.

Option 1: A La Carte Pricing
In a move which will undoubtedly please FCC head Kevin Martin, plans have been announced for two levels of a la carte pricing, which will be available about a year after the merger goes through. You may be asking yourself why this would require a delay. This is because the a la carte options would require new radios which have yet to be developed. So, right off the bat, you have to factor in the cost of new equipment for your home, car, or both.

The first a la carte plan would give the subscriber 50 channels from either XM or Sirius. Additional channels and packages will be able to be added for as little as $0.25, and the companies guarantee that the subscriber would not pay more than the current $12.95. Let's hope this is true, because as it stands now, the XM sports package looks to be $6, and the Sirius sports package is $5. If you want Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony, you're going to pay $6 and $3 respectively.

For $14.99, subscribers can receive the A La Carte II package, which gives you 100 channels, and will apparently allow XM subscribers to pick from some of Sirius's content, and vice versa. This almost looks attractive, until I realize that right now with XM, I pay $12.95 and get about 170 cahnnels, and a Sirius subscriber pays the same $12.95 for about 130 channels. Somehow, I don't see this plan being too well-received by current or potential subscribers.