Mark Your Calendars

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell is scheduled to speak to The Media Institute Monday, Nov. 19. It might be a "mark your calendar" moment in the relations between commissioners and the chairman of the FCC.

Chairman Kevin Martin this week let it slip to the New York Times, something that seems to have become a habit, that the FCC is about to conclude that the cable industry has sufficiently consolidated to meet a regulatory threshhold set back in 1984 that justifies government intervention in its business ( I will avoid obvoius "Big Brother" references).

then it turned out that there might be some question about the number the FCC used to reach that conclusion.

His fellow Republican commissioners did not appear too happy about the leak, particularly when the numbers came into question, saying that at least they were interested in trustworthy data."

That is because they are being asked to vote to approve the Video Competition Report that contains those numbers and that finding, a finding that could have huge implications for cable.

Monday’s speech will be McDowell’s first chance to weigh in on Martin’s so-called 70/70 revelation in a public forum and I fully expect him to do so. And if he doesn’t, there will be ink and ion-stained wretches–the press corp–to press him on it. Stay tuned.