Liberty Buying Worldspace and combining it with SiriusXM? Rumor.

[Grüpsaar]

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"Back in February, John Malone and Liberty Media reached an agreement to pump $530 million into Sirius XM Radio, in exchange for a share of the satcaster. Now Rapid TV News reports that Liberty Media has effectively "bought" $102 million worth of bankruptcy claims of global satellite radio provider Worldspace, leading to speculation that something bigger could be in the works.
Worldspace founder Noah Samara had planned to purchase the entire company, which is also facing financial problems, but was unable to come up with enough funds. Similar to the situation early this year with Sirius XM, Malone's Liberty Media has invested more cash to keep the overseas satcaster afloat.
Rapid TV and Orbitcast hypothesize that Malone could combine Sirius XM and Worldspace to potentially launch Sirius XM globally, though such plans are just speculation at this point."

Hmm. who knows, probably false. But Interesting, no?

 

[Hatuxka]

Worldspace moved a satellite that was to cover South America to Europe. It was to better cover northern Europe, since their African satellite covered southern Europe pretty well. They cover Africa and Southeast Asia, but not Australia. I have a unit I have taken to Europe and Asia. But other than the odd case like me, the military in the middle east and afghanistan, who else is going to make a worthwhile subscriber base? I would love to get MLB/NBA/NFL and Howard Stern (plus NPR's morning edition and all things considered and the BBC-from Worldspace) on a trip overseas, but don't see it happening.

 

[macfanatic010]

1Worldspace's business strategy isn't working because their target base is non-existant. Why would anyone care about getting satellite radio when they have to figure out how to get $ to feed their family for that day?

The only way I can see 1Worldspace having any chance of making a profit is by redirecting their satellites towards europe & east asia (S Korea/Japan) -- places outside of the US/Canada where significant amounts of the population have enough disposable money to afford luxury items.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

1Worldspace's business strategy isn't working because their target base is non-existant. Why would anyone care about getting satellite radio when they have to figure out how to get $ to feed their family for that day?

The only way I can see 1Worldspace having any chance of making a profit is by redirecting their satellites towards europe & east asia (S Korea/Japan) -- places outside of the US/Canada where significant amounts of the population have enough disposable money to afford luxury items.

They had a SAT over Europe. They shut it down for maintenance or replacement. But then they went bankrupt. I don't think the population of Europe cared or at least cared about WorldSpace.