Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) Chief Executive Officer Mel Karmazin seems exasperated that the Federal Communications Commission has yet to rule on his company's merger with XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: XMSR) which was filed more than a year ago.

"We share the reasonable frustration that many of our investors feel regarding the time it has taken," said the loquacious CEO during yesterday's earnings conference call (via SeekingAlpha). "We also share the outrage that some have expressed to me regarding press reports of opportunistic parties trying to take advantage of the process and extract value for themselves that properly belongs to SIRIUS subscribers and shareholders."

Karmazin has a point. The FCC review of the satellite radio merger has moved at a glacial pace because of the opposition of the terrestrial radio industry which figures that any medium that employs Howard Stern needs to be stopped at all costs. As yesterday's earnings report indicates, the industry is not big enough to support two companies.

Sirius reported a first-quarter net loss of $104.1 million, or 7 cents a share, narrower than $144.7 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 33% to $270.4 million. The results, which matched Wall Street expectations, were helped by a drop in SAC per gross subscriber addition to $91 in the first quarter from $101 a year earlier. The company ended the quarter with 8.64 million subscribers, up 31% from a year earlier. Average revenue per subscriber was little changed at$10.42,

The results at XM were worse. The Washington-based company had a net loss of $129.3 million, or 42 cents, on sales of $308.5 million. Janco Partners analyst April Horace told Bloomberg News that "the company is retaining more customers after a free introductory period and is putting its radios into a bigger variety of vehicle models."

Good thing too since subscriber acquisition costs rose to $73 in the quarter from $65 a earlier. Conversion and churn rates both improved year-over-year, according to the company's earnings release.

My colleague Douglas McIntyre, like many observers, is pretty pessimistic about the merger, writing "It is now too late for the proposed merger to do either company any good, so, the merger has fundamentally failed before it was consummated."

I am not sure I would go that far but I agree that satellite radio at best is a niche medium with an uncertain future,