SHARE WAVES

The merger of Sirius and XM gives sports fans everything they could want. Now the new company just needs those listeners to tune in.

Since the inception of satellite radio in 2001, rival brands XM and Sirius have been racing to fill their airwaves with sports programming. But a frenetic run of deal-brokering divided their listeners: Sirius landed the rights to the NFL, the NBA, NASCAR and a bunch of smaller leagues, XM got MLB, the NHL and the PGA, and the two services split college-game coverage based on conference. The companies use different transmission technology, so buyers had to pick one or the other. You couldn't flip between Howard Stern (Sirius) and Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour (XM), and you could not get both pro football and pro baseball.

But with the recent $3.3 billion acquisition of XM by Sirius, subscribers will soon have access to the full range of extraterrestrial broadcasts. By early fall, the newly christened Sirius XM will offer a bunch of options: You'll be able to keep either the old Sirius or XM for $12.95 a month, get a "Best of Both" package for $16.99 a month or go à la carte by picking 50 channels from Sirius and/or XM for $6.99 a month, then adding additional stations for 25 cents apiece. That means, above all else, that fans are just months away from having Syracuse hoops, Royals baseball, the National Lacrosse League and Bubba the Love Sponge all at their fingertips.

Federal red tape tangled the deal for 16 months before it ultimately squeaked through the FCC by a 3-2 vote. The reason: Traditional terrestrial radio stations and consumer advocates griped that a Sirius-and-XM mash-up constituted a monopoly. But Sirius XM is battling not only earthbound counterparts but also iPhones, streaming radio from sites like MLB.com and Slacker, and an online outlet that just released its own portable player. Plus it's now carrying a combined $3.4 billion in debt. That's why, even though the company hasn't released details about what the "Best of Both" or à la carte packages will contain, it's a good bet that sports fans will find a lot to like in each. Sirius and XM may now operate under one roof, but together they need us even more than when they were apart.

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