If you’re an old Sirius or former XM subscriber who lost one or more of your favorite channels after the two satellite radio companies merged earlier this year, CEO Mel Karmazin has a message for you: Tough luck, it’s for the greater good.

Karmazin told reporters at the Reuters Media Summit in New York that the two companies had taken the best of breed in each music channel genre from either Sirius or XM as part of a $400 million cost saving drive.

“We’re going to pick the best channels,” said Karmazin. “We’ve gotten hundreds of people who hated it and claimed they were going to cancel. So we’ve analyzed all the cancellations since the rationalization…It’s hard for me to understand what they don’t like.”

“If we took the most aggressive number of people who cancelled and we take that (away) the $120 a year (they pay) it doesn’t get to a $1 million as compared to the significant amount of cost savings as a company that needs to make money,” said Karmazin.

Our colleague Franklin Paul said he was upset with the loss of his favorite classic hip-hop channel, The Rhyme. So Karmazin made his best pitch to an old school B-boy.

“We have other hip hop channels,” coaxed Karmazin.

“You as a subscriber, though you may miss your channel, you need to make sure we make money because you want us to be around so we can invest in programming and we can provide you with all these services,” said Karmazin.

In other words, deal with it.

(Photo: Reuters)

Sirius XM Chief Executive Mel Karmazin is a serial monogamist when it comes to stocks. No matter where he's worked, from Viacom to Sirius, he only buys stocks in those companies, he told the Reuters Media Summit in New York on Wednesday.

Lately, at Sirius, "every dime I've taken in has been spent buying stock," he said. To show his fidelity, he wears special cufflinks in his shirtsleeves. One says "XM." The other says "Sirius."

Otherwise, he steered clear of stocks in the past decade or so, opting for tax-free municipal bonds or treasury bills. "So I have been a terrible investor because if you look at the past 12 years, my portfolio has only grown... 3 percent a year. If you look at stock market at that period of time, I've left an awful lot of money on the table. Over the last year... I've done ok compared to where a lot of people were."

Speaking of Sirius, he notes all the media reports that peg his annual compensation at $32 million are not quite right.

"When I came to the company, I got 33 million options at $4.72 (each). You take the Black-Scholes formula, and it was worth $150 million. Over five years, that's $30 million a year. And I've never sold a share. That four dollars and 72 cents is now worth 18 cents."

That sounds fairly underwater to us.

(Photo: Reuters)