Explaining regulatory decision making at the Federal Communications Commission: The regulation and deregulation of cable television

Over the course of two decades, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) struggled to develop a regulatory framework for a new communications technology known as cable TV. Cable TV emerged in response to unmet consumer demands for clearer television reception and more viewing alternatives. By the late 1950s, conflicts between television broadcasters and cable systems arose because cable systems began "importing" and retransmitting to their subscribers broadcast signals from distant television stations. Efforts by cable systems to increase program choices created competitive pressures for viewing audiences between local stations and the imported stations. Broadcasters also claimed that cable systems were engaging in "unfair competition" because under then existing law cable systems could retransmit programming without incurring any copyright liability.; Despite the complaints of broadcasters, the FCC at first declined to regulate cable TV. Between 1966 and 1972, however, on the grounds that the unrestricted development of cable would undermine the locally oriented over-the-air television system, the FCC instituted a complex series of regulations for cable systems designed to limit and direct their growth. By 1980, almost all of these rules had been either repealed by the FCC or overturned by the courts. The FCC had concluded that broadcasters did not require protection from cable to survive, prosper, and serve the public.; No approach to regulatory behavior emphasizing a single vantage point is adequate for explaining why the FCC first regulated and then deregulated cable TV. A conceptual framework is developed to facilitate the analysis of FCC decision making from three different vantage points. Regulatory decisions can be understood to varying degrees as either (1) the product of agency goal directed behavior, (2) goal directed behavior constrained by organizational processes, or (3) goal directed behavior constrained by the preferences of external political institutions.; Using both published and published government documents, a wide array of secondary sources, and interviews with key FCC officials, this study demonstrates that each vantage point makes a necessary contribution to explaining the development of the cable TV regulatory framework. Several modest generalizations are proposed concerning the conditions most likely associated with constrained versus unconstrained agency decision making.