Pai Proposes Pruning More Broadcasting, Cable Regs

The FCC will vote on two more deregulatory reforms in Chairman Ajit Pai's continued effort to weed-whack rules he thinks should not still be on the books.

The April 17 meeting will feature an order--final vote--on a reform teed up several months ago: Broadcasters without any revenue from ancillary or supplemental services don't have to report that fact to the FCC.

Related: FCC Tees up More Regulatory Weeds for Whacking

Those who do will still have to, but FCC Chairman Ajit Pai blogged of the upcoming vote that noone opposed the change for those with nothing to report, and that it would eliminate unnecessary paperwork and was "simple common sense."

Also on the agenda is a vote on a proposal--the public will get to comment, then a final vote on an order whill be scheduled--to no longer require cable operators to maintain a list in their local offices of the TV channels that each delivers to subs, a hard-copy requirement Pai points out dates back to 1972.

"Talk about outdated," he blogged. "[C]hannel listings are a quick Internet search away, making absurd the notion of a trip to the company office for the answer."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.