Thank you, Decker.

I have known Decker for a number of years: first in his role as President of the NCTA, and now as CEO of Landmark Communications, and fellow member of the NCTA Board and Executive Committee.

There is no one who is more passionate about the cable business than Decker - except maybe me. And there is no one, who is more articulate than Decker in making its case. He is a consummate diplomat who practices the fine art of consensus building like few others. So it is a distinct pleasure for me to be presented this award by my good friend and fellow cable guy, Decker Anstrom.

I also, of course, want to thank Patrick Maines, Dick Wiley and the Media Institute for this important recognition. A vital and independent media is a pre-requisite for exercising freedom of speech. And, it is that most cherished freedom in our democracy, which we are here to celebrate tonight.

Freedom of speech is at the core of the mission, which The Media Institute has worked tirelessly to foster over the last 27 years, with Patrick at the helm since 1984.

It is always an honor to be in the company of Sumner Redstone. Sumner is certainly one of the people who has had the most influence on the media industry during my career. He has always shown great vision about where this business is headed and continues to be ahead of most of us.

I got into the cable TV business as a new minted MBA from the Tuck School at Darmouth in 1972. I sensed that technology was about to change the media and entertainment businesses in a big way and that cable television would be an important part of that change. It turned out to be an exciting time, when cable was just about to emerge from a rural reception service to an industry that delivered an explosion of viewing choices to the American public.

Thirty-four years later - a lot has happened. We have moved beyond just delivering more TV, to Video on Demand, DVR’s, Broadband, Voice Service and much more. We are on the threshold of even more change and I think this is the most exciting time to be in the cable business since I first joined it.

There’s never been more opportunity for innovation driven by new technology. The trick is to understand what is possible and to understand consumers and what they want. The art is to marry those two sets of understandings into new products and services while continually improving service levels. We are spending all of our time focused on just that.

We also have a lot of competition. We have satellite companies, telephone companies, wireless, and I’m not sure that anyone really knows where the internet technology is going to lead. This competition is making us better at what we do and that’s a good thing.

The industry that I work in and the industries that we touch have long been heavily regulated. Given the historical importance of these industries to the American public and the historic structures of industries such as broadcast, telephone, and cable; that‘s understandable.

However, now we have this competitive stew of changing technology and everyone getting into everyone else’s business. Whenever folks in these industries like the way things are going, they tend to ask for deregulation and whenever they don’t like something or see a way that regulators could give them an advantage they tend to ask for regulation - usually of a business other than their own!!

One of the things I am most proud of is that the cable industry has consistently advocated deregulation of all of these industries whenever competition is available as an alternative to regulation. We have advocated deregulation even when it wasn’t in our own short term interest. Decker is the one who led the industry to that philosophy a number of years ago and I applaud him for it.

Those of us who are lucky enough to have grown up in the cable business are somewhat astonished by what has happened.

First, we created more entertainment choice than anyone could have imagined in 1972. Think of HBO and Showtime, think of CNN and the other news networks, think of MTV and Nickelodeon, think of Discovery and the History Channel. The list goes on and on. Although these networks are now distributed by satellite and soon telephone companies as well as cable, they were launched by the cable industry.

Second, we created the broadband revolution. Telephone companies had DSL technology for years but never did much with it. Cable launched broadband in the mid nineties and the rest is history.

More recently we have been launching digital voice. Now, I thought we were pretty hot stuff in 1996 when we launched our Road Runner Broadband service. It took us the better part of four years to roll it out over Time Warner Cable’s footprint. In contrast, two years ago, in 2004 we launched our Digital Phone product across all of our operations in just 12 months!!

Video on Demand is used by 50-60 percent of our digital customers each month. That’s pretty good. Start Over, which allows people to start at the beginning of programs they tuned into late, has been getting 70 percent usage in Columbia, SC, its test market. Based on that we are rolling it out elsewhere.

Why are we doing these things? We are doing them to grow by offering new products and services to consumers. We are doing them to compete. This works. Competition works. It’s good for consumers and it makes us better business people.

Cable has been the leader in changing the media landscape and there certainly has been an explosion in types of content and ways to access content. Together with all of this choice and freedom of speech comes responsibility; responsibility to give people the tools they need to navigate through the choices. Things like parental controls and media education help parents take charge of what their children are watching. We believe strongly in providing these important tools along with our services.

I am honored to accept this award on behalf of Time Warner Cable and all of our 45,000 employees who work hard to serve our customers every day.

Thank you.