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Abstract: In recent years, commentators, courts, and the FCC have begun distinguishing cable from broadcast television and analogizing cable instead to the print media in order to afford cable fuller first amendment freedom than broadcasting traditionally has enjoyed. This article challenges that approach, arguing that cable and broadcasting have a functional similarity and are close substitutes for one another. In fact, they form a unified cable/broadcasting medium that should be indistinguishable, for first amendment purposes, from the print media. In this way, cable and broadcasting each supports the other's entitlement to full first amendment freedom.
Cable, first amendment, broadcast television
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