STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI
Re: Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video 
Programming, MB Docket No. 14-16.
The Commission’s 16th Video Competition Report is filled with good news.  When it comes to 
video programming, Americans have more choices than ever before.  They can select from an amazing
variety of programming. They can watch that programming on a wide array of devices. And they can 
view that programming when it is convenient for them.  Indeed, the common complaint about television 
these days isn’t that there isn’t enough quality programming to watch; it’s that there isn’t enough time to 
watch all of the shows that are generating buzz!  As a father of two young children, I certainly identify 
with that sentiment.
A quick note on why this report has been characterized by Arrested Development.  The 
Communications Act requires us to “annually report to Congress on the status of competition in the 
market for the delivery of video programming.”
1
Unfortunately, this statutory mandate has collapsed like 
a House of Cards, as the Commission failed to issue such a report in 2014.
2
  Instead, the FCC has been 
Breaking Bad by focusing on other matters.  We are not Mad Men; we are regulators, and it is Elementary
that we are bound by the law.  If we are to oversee the communications Empire for The Americans, we 
should provide timely marketplace snapshots as Congress asked us to do.  It would be a Scandal if we 
continue to ignore this legal obligation.  Hopefully, we will do so next time—well before The Wire—so 
we do not end up on Congress’s Blacklist.
                                                          
1
47 U.S.C. § 548(g).
2
Unless, of course, a 2014 version of the report has been buried in The X-Files.