Sirius and XM merger

Yesterday, in my marketing class, we discussed an article that was printed in the wall street journal. The article discussed a possible merger of Sirius and XM radio. The merger is estimated at 11.4 billion dollars and would be structured as a fifty-fifty merger, with CEO of Sirius, Mel Karmazin, to serve as the CEO of the company after the merger. The satellite radio industry began in 1997, but just recently has been growing and both companies both have debts, which combined amount to 2.3 billion dollars. The federal communications commission, FCC, says that the companies can not merge because these two companies are the only companies to offer satellite radio in the United States, which would make the satellite company a monopoly after the merger. There is debate whether or not the merger will happen and if they would legally be able to merge the two companies. Both companies are in debt because of the high startup costs involved, however they may believe that without competition they can begin making profits. We discussed, in class, the reason the satellite companies will or will not succeed. Satellite radio charges 12.95 per month and is coming standard in new vehicles, but they are competing against free radio. It all depends on what people want. Satellite radio has more stations, it is uncensored, and no advertisements when listening to music. It is unclear whether or not the merger will go through and for how long until the satellite companies actually start making profits. Only time will tell!

Phone Calls!

Yesterday I was assigned to read an article about making phone calls over the internet in my Business 110A class. This is also known as VOIP, which are the acronyms for voice over internet protocol. The article was interesting and explained how future phone calls will be made over the internet. Companies such as Vonage are increasing their clientele by 80,000 each quarter, says CEO Jeffery Citron. The article also explained how companies such as Time Warner and Verizon will soon be losing customers because more people will soon be switching from their traditional telephone providers. Interestingly AT&T has been working on VOIP communication since they stopped marketing their ordinary telephone services months ago. The article suggests that more phone calls will be made over the internet using new VOIP technology. This article was an assignment for my other class and is related to my field of study, but thought I would also discuss the article on my blog. So there it is!

My Writing Style

When ever I write a paper outside of class, whether it is a classroom assignment or a personal letter, I always go to the computer first. There is no planning involved in my writing. It seems to work best for me if I sit down at the computer and just start writing. I then attempt to write a good opening paragraph to catch the reader’s attention. As we have read in the book one of our main purposes for writing is for the audience, so I try and keep this in mind. After I have written the opening paragraph I have some clue as to what I am going to talk about in the body of my paper. The next step in my writing process is to research the topic so I can use factual information to prove my point to the reader. As I am writing I am slowly cutting and pasting sentences into different paragraphs, and then re-wording them to make sense. I try and read the paper several times to check for grammatical errors and sentence structure. Once I have read it a few times I feel like I am comfortable with it and print the paper out. Sometimes I read it again after printing the paper because I often find more mistakes reading it on paper rather than on the computer screen. After reading chapter four I realize that I may need to check for clarity, making sure my paper follows a logical order, checking for redundancy, and so forth. I think that an outline will also help me, which I learned about in chapter two of the textbook, organize my paper.