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For about a year now, I have been telling people in the radio business that if you don't like Sirius Satellite (SIRI - commentary - Cramer's Take), you better just go buy the darned thing because one day, it will be bigger than you are. When that happens, if it thinks that the wall has been hit, it always can buy you -- and then the game's over. We know that's exactly what AOL did when it looked like the business had hit a wall, and that's what Sirius can do now, too. Think about it: Sirius now has a market cap of $7 billon. If you add up the market caps of Cumulus (CMLS - commentary - Cramer's Take), Emmis (EMMS - commentary - Cramer's Take), Entercom (ETM - commentary - Cramer's Take), Westwood One (WON - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Sinclair (SBGI - commentary - Cramer's Take), you don't get $7 billion. If Sirius decided to, it could roll up all of the radio it wanted, but none of the radio companies save Viacom (VIA.B - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Clear Channel (CCU - commentary - Cramer's Take) is big enough to swallow up Sirius anymore. That's what happens with these technologies. That's why I always thought that IBM (IBM - commentary - Cramer's Take) should have bought Intel (INTC - commentary - Cramer's Take). It is why I thought that The New York Times (NYT - commentary - Cramer's Take) or Dow Jones (DJ - commentary - Cramer's Take) or some other media outfit should have bought Yahoo! (YHOO - commentary - Cramer's Take) after it cratered and that IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI - commentary - Cramer's Take) should have bought Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Cramer's Take) when it had the chance. Those deals all are now impossible. When you get the market cap, you have to use it. Otherwise, you most certainly will lose it. The rational nonparticipants among you might say, "Jim, Sirius isn't worth $7 billion." To which I always say, "A stock is worth what you can sell the shares at," and I am pretty confident that you could sell a million shares of Sirius at or near the bid price that gives it that market cap. I am not interested in academics. Sirius folk can see it, too, and you have to wonder whether they could hedge their bets by buying up some terrestrial franchises.
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At the time of publication, Cramer was long Cumulus Media, Intel and Yahoo!.James J. Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made.
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