STATEMENT OF 
CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI

Re: 	Amendment of Commission Rule Requiring Records of Cable Operator Interests in Video Programming, Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative, MB Docket Nos. 20-35 and 17-105, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

Today, we launch our twentieth proceeding in the Commission’s Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative.  That’s a lot.  Indeed, it’s larger than the number of Harry Potter (8), Fast and Furious (8), and Lord of the Rings (3) movies combined (19).  

Now, each of those movie series launched in 2001, the same year that the D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded the Commission’s cable channel occupancy limits, which restricted the number of channels that could be occupied on cable systems by video programmers in which the cable operator had an attributable interest.  In order to help enforce those limits, the Commission established a recordkeeping rule requiring cable operators to maintain in their public inspection files records regarding their carriage of any vertically-integrated video programming.

Over the last nineteen years, the FCC under seven different Chairs—four Democrats and three Republicans—has declined to revisit the issue of channel occupancy limits.  Yet our recordkeeping requirement has remained on the books.  So, at Commissioner O’Rielly’s suggestion, this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking principally tees up a very simple question:  Does this rule continue to serve any useful purpose?  We seek comment on whether this reporting requirement is still necessary and ask about the usefulness of the information collected versus the costs associated with compiling it.

I’d like to thank the Commission staff who prepared this item.  From the Media Bureau, Ty Bream, Michelle Carey, Chad Guo, Brendan Holland, and from the Office of General Counsel, David Konzcal.  While another Fast and Furious movie is scheduled to be released this spring, bringing the combined number of Fast and Furious, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings films to twenty, with your help, we’ll have already launched at least the twenty-first media modernization proceeding by the time Vin Diesel returns to the silver screen.