ABSTRACT
Cable franchising first peaked my interest as a doctoral student at the University of Georgia. I was taking a Telecommunications Policy course with Dr. William Lee, who had published an influential article in the Vanderbilt Law Review, “Cable Franchising and the First Amendment.” Professor Lee is an excellent writer, and in that article, as well as in others, he persuasively argued that municipal regulation of cable TV abridged the First Amendment rights of cable operators. Drawing comparisons between newspapers and cable TV, Professor Lee maintained that in the same way newspaper editors selected stories and then placed those stories in a news bin on a public sidewalk, a cable operator selected networks for carriage and utilized the public right of way to lay cable to the subscriber’s home. Blending quotes in his copy from zealous municipal regulators who had little appreciation for First Amendment issues made a compelling argument.
