huge news on satellite radio scene: XM and Sirius digital satellite radio companies merge

Everyone knows that if you want satellite radio, you have to decide which of two incompatible families of services and radio equipment you have to chose from.

Well, not not any more - at least, not for long.

CNNMoney reports XM, Sirius announce merger.

USA Today says, XM and Sirius satellite radio companies strike a merger deal.

At the moment, www.radiosatellite.org shows the features, costs, limitations, and partners involved with each of the two formerly separate companies.

As a guy who likes music, listening to the news, and a little commentary from time to time while he is driving to and from work - this is kind of interest-grabbing.

As a guy who uses his computer over a radio in his house for news/entertainment 99.99 percent of the time - with a TiVo and computer-based tuner for all of his television-watching - I am pretty excited.

This should usher in a new golden age of radio.

It will probably really shake up the broadcast radio scene.

For one thing, this will directly pit accused monopolist Clear Channel directly against their more space age brethern.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out against the Kerbango internet radio service in iTunes, AOL Radio, and Live 365 internet radio.

I suspect this will be the first boulder to roll in an avalanche of change in the way we get our audio programming in the United States.

Companies across the US and some other parts of the world are probably scrambling as they figure out how to capitalize - or blunt the impact - of this new age of radio.

By the way, the first man to come up with and publish the idea of broadcasting radio waves to earth from satellites encircling the globe was Arthur C. Clarke. He is a noted and celebrated author of science fiction.

I imagine there are a lot of people celebrating his idea tonight!!!

Apple v. Apple is over, for good

Yesterday computer company Apple announced that it had gotten the full rights to the Apple name from the old record label of the Beatles.

So the lawyers of the label will no longer be suing the computer company over the similarities between the names of the two firms.

Steve Jobs will not be receiving any more lawsuits from them every time he rolls out a new music-related product or service, as was the case in the past.

Apple recently shortened its corporate name from Apple Computer to simply Apple, in recognition of the fact it was now active in many computer, software, accessory, Internet, and music/video entertainment services. Apple is not just a computer company any more.

Steve Jobs also had a lot of Beatles music and album art installed in the library of the iTunes application he was demoing at MacWorld back in January.

Perhaps this was a none-too-subtle way of indicating that some positive steps were in the offing back then toward bringing the two corps together on friendly terms.

Based on comments legal representation for Apple Records made a couple months or so back, the music of The Beatles might find itself for sale at the iTunes Store sometime soon.