Not so fast there, XM Satellite and Sirius

Back at the end of March, I wondered how the Justice Department could figure that a merger of the only two satellite radio companies in the entire whole wide world would not constitute a monopoly. At the time I thought I was a majority of one but it turns out there's a handful of senators who are mad as hell about this and are not going to stand it anymore either. At least, they're going to put up a tussle about it. You can read what they are doing here, but it includes forcing the merged company to, among other things, set aside 50 channels for minority and non-commercial informational programming. They also want to require the merged company to include HD-capability in their receivers, which means the devices would carry free, over-the-air signals, as well as satellite broadcasting. Now that would eliminate the monopoly thing, as far as I'm concerned.