It was announced today that the DOJ was clearing the way for a merger of the two satellite radio stations. XM Radio (nasdaq:xmsr) has all but gobbled up Sirius (nasdaq:siri) The news brought the stock up for both companies but Sirius has a long way to go before it can reach the $5.00 mark prior to the Howard Stern announcement.

“After a careful and thorough review of the proposed transaction, the division concluded that the evidence does not demonstrate that the proposed merger of XM and Sirius is likely to substantially lessen competition, and that the transaction therefore is not likely to harm consumers,” said Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust unit.

Buying Sirius stock and watching the price plummet over the years may scare you but I think that this is a diamond in the rough. I bought shares of Sirius with the long term in mind. Granted when the companies merge, they will be adjusted into XM Radio shares and may still lose some of the original value but the stock will rise since XM Radio is the leader in the space and you can never go wrong investing in a market leader.

The merger is being talked about on blogs related to gadgets to stock analysts. Gizmodo is one of my favorites and had a little story about it where they wrote:

XM and Sirius just cleared the largest (and longest) hurdle on their path to getting all conjoined: The Justice Department officially okayed Sirius’s $5 billion buyout of XM. They said that the growth of mobile broadband “made it even more unlikely that the transaction would harm consumers in the longer term,” squashing arguments from radio and broadcasting groups the merger would be anti-competitive.

If you keep your old radio, XM customers will keep getting their XM stuff with the added goodness of Sirius programming, and while Sirius people will get their same batch, plus the fresh crunch of XM content.

However, the companies said last year that they would be willing to offer a so-called “a la carte” price plan where consumers could pick certain packages ranging from $6.99 a month to $16.99 a month. The two companies have also maintained that a combined service offering the best of both companies’ offerings will cost less than the $25.90 a month that a consumer would currently have to pay to subscribe to both Sirius and XM.

“The combination of our companies will lead to more choices and better pricing for our subscribers, and result in a stronger competitor in the rapidly evolving audio entertainment market,” said XM in a message to subscribers on its Web site after the DOJ announced it had approved the deal.