Recently, the nation’s two satellite radio providers, XM and Sirius, merged. There was a lot of concern expressed over this, with many folks thinking that the removal of any competition would mean the removal of quality.

In the post-merger period, there has, indeed, been much griping going on about how the quality of the more exotic programming has gone downhill. Playlists have gotten shorter, content is suddenly being censored, etc.

Well, not being a subscriber to either service (I’m not a big fan of using radio for music except under some specific cases . . . maybe I’ll talk about that later), I went to talk to a co-worker who is. She tells me that she has been a subscriber to both radio networks for some time now, using a portable Sirius radio at her desk, and having an XM radio in her car.

I asked her if she has noticed any particular drop off in the quality of programming, and she said she had not.

I then asked the magic question: What do you listen to? She tells me her tastes in music centre around classic rock, and listed Journey as her number one favourite band.

So the way it appears to me is this: The combined Sirius/XM no longer needs to compete for niche audiences, and so no niche audiences are served. This leaves them free to compete with mainstream radio alone, where they can win for now by not playing advertisements.

My prediction is that you will hear them playing advertisements sometime soon, just as happened to cable TV.