Long-time Sirius satellite radio subscriber Stan Petrov is fed up and he's not going to take it anymore. He signed on with Sirius two years ago and bought several receivers. But since Sirius merged with XM radio, he has lost his access to coverage of NBA games.

"I know, your customer service people are telling their subscribers that it is that way because the NBA moved its contract to XM," Petrov wrote to Sirius in a protest letter that he forwarded to Ars. "I do not believe that is the reason. I believe the reason is called 'manipulating the market/consumer'."

Petrov is not the only unhappy camper around. The blogosphere is awash with rage at a wave of postmerger Sirius/XM channel/program swapping announced last Wednesday. "A feeling of pleasant surprise turned to horror this morning after I started up my XM-subscribed car," fumed Rick Aristotle Munarriz that day over at The Motley Fool. "At first, I was greeted with some of my favorite Sirius music channels, like 1st Wave, on the air. Then I discovered that most of my favorite XM channels were gone."

Ditto declared various commenters on the story. "I'm pissed," wrote one. "The channels that I liked were replaced with channels I don't like. I was hoping for twice the channels so there was more chance of finding a good song at any given time." Dave Zatz also dropped his subscription, saying that "I don't support keeping customers in the dark until the zero hour."

We're shocked

Who would have thought that Sirius and XM would change their schedules after joining forces? They only repeatedly pledged to do that during the Federal Communications Commission's proceeding on the union. To be fair, Petrov opposed the marriage. But the protests of plenty of other subscribers sound something akin to Captain Renault's famous comment in Casablanca: "I am shocked, shocked, to find Sirius and XM doing what they promised they would do after merging."

Sirius XM Inc. released their happy-talk-style press release about the changes last week. "With this new programming lineup, subscribers will receive the same number of music and non-music channels on the SIRIUS and XM services as they have in the past," the announcement cheerfully proclaimed.

So XM subscribers will now get Bruce Springsteen's E Street Radio, the Elvis channel broadcast live from Graceland, and Cosmo Radio, "geared toward Cosmopolitan magazine's audience of fun, fearless females." Meanwhile Sirius customers will be able to access Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, among other channels.

But what the release glossed over is that the same number of channels doesn't mean the same channels, and that's the rub, since subscribers have receivers that only access one of the services. In the voluntary deal they cut with the FCC, Sirius XM promised they would offer an interoperable receiver for sale—that is, a tuner that gets both Sirius and XM—within nine months after they merged. Since both entities formally combined on July 29, if they wait until the last minute, such a device won't be available to consumers until around early May.

Sirius XM's winter of discontent has a familiar chill to anyone who, like this writer, has followed the ups and downs of listener-supported public radio and TV stations (not the satellite kind). Any change in the station's schedule or financial situation is roundly denounced by long-time subscribers, who often band together into ad hoc organizations to rescue their beloved service.

And so behold SaveSirius.org, whose leader Michael Hartleib says his site represents more than 700 angry Sirius shareholders alarmed at the precipitous decline of their stock. It's at about a quarter a share these days, down from over seven bucks in 2005. The group is threatening to sue.

"It's time to take back our Company. It's time to get a backbone," Hartleib says. "I have been asked by my family to give up the fight. My answer to them has been 'If everyone gives up, we lose. If no one stands up for justice we will have none'."

Not everybody hates these schedule changes, though. "Bring on the merger and now all the sudden I get the best of both worlds," another commenter wrote in response to the Motley Fool article. "Baseball in the summer and football all season long! The music is good on both Sirius and XM so if they need to cut out some of the stations, it only makes since not to have two similar things on the air."

HD chains

But the biggest watcher of the Sirius XM union doesn't post comments on chat boards. Judging by its latest FCC filing, Clear Channel radio is still extremely bitter about the Commission's approval of the wedding, which it ardently opposed from the outset. Not only did the FCC give the merger the go ahead, but it turned down most of the merger conditions for which Clear Channel asked: making Sirius XM obey the agency's indecency rules or lifting the Commission's caps on the number of terrestrial radio stations the radio giant could buy, among others. Clear Channel said eliminating that ceiling would only be fair to offset the increased market power that Sirius XM would supposedly enjoy.

Now Clear Channel is pushing for a rule that critics warn will make it even tougher for Sirius XM to survive the next few years. The company wants the FCC to require those interoperable satellite radio tuners to also include HD Radio reception—Clear Channel is a big investor in Ibiquity HD radio, the FCC-authorized standard-bearer for digital radio.

"It is now incumbent on the Commission to take the necessary steps to turn around the overall negative situation that free local radio faces," Clear Channel says, "and a reasonable first step would be to adopt a rule to require [satellite radio] receivers to include HD Radio reception capacity." Opponents of this requirement argue it will make the receivers much more expensive, reducing their popularity.