It's one of those questions that won’t be answered until the XM/Sirius merger is settled, but if comments made by Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin today on Howard Stern's radio program are any indication, terrestrial radio might be facing a tough contract negotiation with a merged satellite company for access to The Opie & Anthony Show.

When asked if he sees value in sharing content with terrestrial radio, Karmazin said, "I have not seen that in any way, shape or form as being an advantage. We compete with free radio. The more different our content is, the better it is. I just never saw any advantage of sharing terrestrial radio content."

"You don’t need to duplicate what's on AM/FM radio," reiterated Karmazin when pressed about "some people" on the other service. Presumably the Stern show staffer that asked the question was talking about Opie & Anthony, who can be heard on both XM and over 25 terrestrial radio stations.

Karmazin says this despite the fact that Sirius currently simulcasts terrestrial feeds of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and NCAA, among other sports programming. ABC News programming such as The Sean Hannity Show is also simulcast on Sirius, along with shared content from CNN, Fox News, CNN Headline News, and NPR programming.

As for the future of O&A's contract, Karmazin said, "My experience is you honor contracts. Obviously, any deals that were done, you would just continue to honor and as you went forward, you would make a decision as to whether or not it made sense or not."

If the merger closes by the end of 2007, as is being pushed for by the two satcasters, O&A will have less than a year left on their contract, and it has them wondering what will happen with Karmazin as CEO of the merged company. After all, Karmazin was the CEO at Infinity Broadcasting when the duo had to sit out their contract after the Sex For Sam stunt went awry, and when a gag order was placed on them that disallowed any mention of Stern on their program. 

"I don’t want to sit there if we're going to be sh*t on all the time," said Anthony Cumia during today's (2/26) program. "If on a daily basis, we have to be told don’t talk about this guy... and constantly being f**ked with, then were going to have a problem. The second fiddle thing... if we notice we're not getting any resources, because 100 percent of them are being pumped over to [Stern's] show, it's going to annoy us. I'm not going to sit on his channel and have to do a Howard Stern commercial by mentioning Howard 100."

"It's so obvious now that Mel has not mentioned our names, that it just shows us how unwelcome we will be in that situation," Anthony added later in the program.

The duo maintain they will want their own entity if the merger goes through, keeping their Virus channel intact without any line-up changes. "We want our own channel to continue, it's as simple as that," said Gregg "Opie" Hughes.

When contacted on-air by FMQB, Opie & Anthony stressed they could "absolutely" work with Karmazin again, but there would be a "big problem" if he tried to instill the restrictions and gag order that were in place while all parties were working at Infinity. 

"Mel knows if Howard leaves us alone, we leave him alone," said Opie. "Mel has always known that, but the problem was when Mel gave us the gag order, Howard was still able to say whatever the hell he wanted about us. That is where the real issue was."

"We certainly have the best of both worlds right now, but if we had to, we would go back to regular radio full time," Opie added. If that happened, the duo also maintain they could use the Internet as a release for some for their too-edgy-for-regular-radio content, which wouldn’t be a stretch as they are already adept at using online video by broadcasting their program over the web via Paltalk.