Jul 23

Written by: Jeremy Glowacki
7/23/2007 4:00 PM 

Hello, Id like to place an order for delivery, and Ill take the professional baseball package, Ethel, and Real Jazz, but hold the adult-content channels and MSG, please.

In an effort, apparently, to convince skeptical regulators who must approve their proposed merger, that they are more consumer-friendly, the countrys two satellite radio companies have announced detailed plans to provide a la carte subscription packages to their customers.

Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio said they would offer consumers the ability to purchase the best of the premium services now offered by each company--like NFL, MLB, and NBA packages--for a monthly fee of $14.99. For $6.99 a month, another package would enable listeners to choose 50 of the non-premium channels, with each additional channel costing 25 cents. The catch? The new offer would require new hardware.

The companies also said that they would let listeners select family friendly and other rate plans, and would give subscribers a $1 a month credit if they asked to have stations with adult content blocked. Consumers who do not want to change their existing service would not see any changes in their current monthly bill of $12.95.

The announcement, coming the day before the period for receiving comments on the merger proposal closes at the FCC, was apparently an effort to persuade the agency that the merger was in the public interest.

As a former Sirius and current XM subscriber I think the concept makes a lot of sense. Ive had plenty of experience with satellite radio and although Im a big fan of the big band sounds of Channel 4, which features 1940s-genre music (Im nostalgic about the WWII era), baseball games are the only other reason I tune in.

Frankly I find the extremely compressed music on most XM stations hard on my ears. Information, such as baseball play-by-play of out-of-market games and news sounds tinny and robotic, but as long as you can understand it, you can tolerate it. Music not so much.

Thats why Im in favor of this Chinese menu concept proposed by the satellite radio companies. I would happily pay only for my baseball package and skip the rest of it. Im always a fan of choice and not being locked into more than I want to pay for. My only question would be, can I switch to an NFL package after baseball season is over?