The merger of SiriusXM is long complete. The CRTC has managed to somehow keep Sirius and XM to running two separate organizations in Canada, confirming regrettably that the Federal Government still has a minor chokehold on this great product. Even with this in consideration, all Sirius subscribers hear and see on their receivers what everyone else across North America sees as far as formatting.

Unfortunately, Sirius customers in Canada are not able to obtain the best of XM packages, which would have included NHL coverage, Oprah Winfrey’s channel and much more. Alternatively, XM customers cannot receive the best of Sirius and benefit from extensive football coverage, and the Howard Stern Channels.

It is safe and logical to believe that channels that featured identical programming were both examined from the points of content, ratings and deliverance from the on-air talent. Even the names of the channels appear to have been taken into consideration. Sirius clearly had the upper hand in the merger with a larger subscriber base, taking almost every single music disc jockey into the merger.

I will give you a great example of one of these channels after they emerged from the merge.

Buzzsaw was the Sirius based Classic Hard Rock/Heavy Metal channel, while The Boneyard was an XM product. The ratings on both stations were excellent. Both have quality programming and a combined large listening base who will list it as the first station on their receiver pre-sets. In November of 2008, both stations went back to the drawing board, took talent from both companies into the absorbed station now called The Boneyard after a 3 month break for the re-tooling, replaced with specialty programming (AC/DC Radio, which went into January of this year). The merged station came into the regular programming line-up a sure fire winner. They gave it the more popular XM name to top it off. Recently the station was named one of the best classic rock stations in America. With Terrestrial Radio Classic Rock slowly dying out, The Boneyard is fast becoming more popular with Canadian subscribers through word of mouth!

There are many other great examples and theories of what happened behind the doors after the merger. Programming wise, the company wanted to take the best of what it had and run hard with it!  Sirius subscribers in Canada have clearly come out the winner. The very best of XM formatting made its way into some of the Sirius channels, thereby making our subscriptions a great value for our hard earned dollar!