Finally, some movement.

It seems that the head of U.S. Federal Communications Commission Kevin Martin will support Sirius Satellite Radio’s proposed purchase of rival XM Satellite Radio.

The Washington Post and others are reporting that Martin decided to support the deal after the companies agreed to concessions intended to prevent the new company from raising prices or stifling competition among radio makers.

A decision has been a long time coming. Seventeen months ago the two companies announced they would merge, bringing entertainers such as Oprah Winfrey and shock jock Howard Stern under the same banner. The Justice Department approved the deal in March, but the companies are still waiting for the FCC.

The question is, have the delays made the whole issue mute? Have iPhones and every other sort of portable music/phone/camera/microwave oven gadget made concern over the XM/Sirius combination seem… well… dated?

Keep an eye on:

• Carl Icahn, who launched a proxy battle in May to replace the board of Yahoo says the deal Yahoo forged with Google “might have some merit” (Reuters)
• A bigger, meaner “The Incredible Hulk” crushed the competition at North American weekend box office with a $54.5 million take, but still fell short of its predecessor (Reuters)
• Time Warner hopes to move swiftly to find a buyer for AOL’s dial-up business after the company completes its separation from the Platform A advertising division in the next month, unnamed sources told the (NY Post).
• Canada’s Nortel Networks is challenging larger rival Cisco Systems with a negative advertising campaign, saying that Cisco’s equipment uses twice as much energy as that of Nortel’s (WSJ).
• The Associated Press will attempt to set standards on how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on its copyright (New York Times).