Liberty Talks Of Sirius XM/DirecTV Plans
By Amy Gilroy -- TWICE, 2/26/2009
Englewood, Colo. — Liberty Media, which recently bailed out Sirius XM with a $530 million cash infusion, is considering bundling Sirius XM subscriptions with DirecTV subscriptions and is interested in mobile video on Sirius XM spectrum in the future.
Liberty CEO Greg Maffei told analysts yesterday the “great dream” is that Sirius and XM might combine to 150 channels in the future, using half of its 25MHz of spectrum and freeing up 12.5MHz for mobile video.
“That’s down the road and highly speculative,” he said, noting there are also video quality issues with this scenario. But Maffei stated that such a video offering on Sirius XM spectrum would sit at “the intersection where Sirius XM and DirecTV reside,” he said.
Liberty owns a controlling interest in DirecTV.
In addition, Maffei told analysts during a conference call, he can imagine bundling Sirius XM with an $80 DirecTV offering. Referring to bundled packages, he said, “I think those are things we’ve talked about … something Mel [Karmazin, Sirius XM CEO] is enthused about … I hope we will be able to proceed on these.”
DirecTV already includes some Sirius channels in its DirecTV packages, including two Sirius channels in its basic family plan.
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