Sirius and XM merger has made it through the Justice Department

The merger of the only two satellite radio companies has been approved by the Justice Department who determines whether or not it would negatively affect consumers or not. The only hurdle left is the FCC.

After the Justice Department decision the FCC has been getting a lot of pressure from the parties that are interested in seeing this merger fail as the FCC is the last stop for the merger before Sirius is allowed to buy XM for the estimated 4.59 billion dollars. The NAB has to be the biggest opposition to the merger with it backing the interests of just about every AM/FM station there is.

The concern is that the merger would drive costs of hardware so far down, and programming so far down that there wouldn’t be much of a reason to listen to the commercial-ridden mediocrity that is broadcast radio anymore. Of course that’s not how the NAB states it, but the honest truth of it is that if the AM/FM stations were offering up even remotely competitive content there’d be little to no reason to pay a monthly amount just for commercial free radio, but they aren’t and satellite radio is simply amazing. So, I personally hope this merger goes through and things are looking up for the two companies.

[via Reuters]