What Is The Difference Between The Federal Communications Commission's Regulation Of NBC Or CTV?

Introduction Ask anyone in the modern era of media: what’s the difference between NBC and CNBC? While the distinction used to be clear, nowadays, this question baffles the average television viewer. If both channels come through the same television, are they really that different? To present-day viewers, the differences between over-the-air broadcast channels and cable channels may be indistinguishable. However, from historical and business points of view, the two different types of channels developed in very different ways, and thus are regulated in completely different manners.

This paper will analyze the differences between the Federal Communications Commission’s regulation of over-the-air broadcasting versus regulation of cable and satellite

Data from the Wall Street firm Pacific Crest shows that although multichannel video programing distributors have been hemorrhaging subscribers since 2010, they still penetrate 80 percent of all households (Udland). According to an analysis performed by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, 85 percent of all American homes pay for television. Between 1992 and 2014, the percentage of households that pay for television increased from 61 percent to 85 percent (“Industry Data”). In comparison, The Nielson Company estimates that 96 percent of households have TV in total — making the gap between cable proliferation and total television proliferation only about 11 to 15 percent (“Nielson Estimates”). Furthermore, these cable proliferation estimates do not factor in public spaces where cable television may be viewed in everyday life, such as restaurants, doctors’ offices and airport. With such broad connectivity to cable even in the face of the widespread transition to Internet television viewing, it becomes more difficult to not consider cable to be a good that is widely available to the

Several websites or search engines, including Hulu and Bing, allow viewers to legally view a variety of television shows with no subscription fee. Piracy, although illegal, has also increased access to broadcast and cable television series. “Cyberlocker” site such as Megashare, Hotfile and Fileserv allow users across the globe to share the same video files using a remote drop box. According to a lawsuit filed by major Hollywood studios against several cyberlocker websites in February 2011, these website are responsible for content theft, and therefore increased television viewership, on a “massive scale (Johnson).” The fact that Internet viewership of television programming is unregulated essentially nullifies the regulatory differences between over-the-air broadcast and cable. It is important to note that by and large, Internet content is immune from indecency regulations following the Reno v. ACLU first amendment case decision in 1997 (Craig). Because indecent Internet content was ruled unlikely to be encountered by accident, it is difficult to determine if users are underage, and software programs are available to prevent children from searching inappropriate content, the Internet has enjoyed the freedom to transmit indecent content (Craig). In the Reno v. ACLU decision, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “We presume that