NAB'S HIRED GUNS LOBBY FCC'S MCDOWELL AGAINST SATCASTER MERGER Jeffrey Yorke – Radio and Records FCC commissioner Robert McDowell is being urged by an old friend to vote against the $13.6 billion merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and rival XM Satellite Radio. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., former Virginia attorney general Jerry Kilgore met with McDowell on Tuesday at the FCC to press McDowell to reject the proposed merger.
Kilgore, a Republican who lost a 2005 bid to become governor of Virginia to Democrat Tim Kaine, is a longtime ally of McDowell's. Kilgore's candidate committee donated $12,500 to McDowell's failed 2003 campaign for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, the report said.
Kilgore lobbied McDowell on behalf of the Consumer Coalition for Competition in Satellite Radio, an NAB-funded group that describes itself as a group of George Washington University law students who are XM and Sirius subscribers and who are concerned about the merger. Former NAB counsel and partner in D.C. law firm Williams Mullens Julian Shepard was also part of the effort.
McDowell recently told R&R that he had made no decision on the merger and would wait until a Department of Justice determination on whether the two satellite radio companies compete only with one another or, as argued by Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin, the satcasters compete with terrestrial radio, MP3 players and the rest of the audio entertainment landscape. |