In cable television, many governments, including the ones of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, apply a must-carry regulation stating that forces a cable TV provider to carry the public interest programming, like locally licensed television stations, on a provider's system. In some countries, this "traditional" approach had been extended to the Internet information sources. Similar approach in other sectors, like telecommunications, is called universal service.
North America
Canada
Under current Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations, the lowest tier of service on all Canadian television providers may not be priced higher than $25 a month, and must include all local Canadian broadcast television channels, local legislative and educational services, and all specialty services that have 9.1(1)(h) must-carry status. All specialty channels licensed by the CRTC as a mainstream news channel must also be offered by all television providers, although they need not be on the lowest tier of service. In the mid-to-late 1970s, the CRTC implemented a rule that a cable system must carry a broadcast television station at no cost to the broadcaster if the transmitter emitted an equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) of at least 5 watts. This CRTC rule may have changed over the years, but in principle, a broadcast television station transmitting at 1 kilowatt EIRP must be carried. The status of terrestrial digital only channels with respect to the must-carry requirement is untested, because, unlike those in the U.S., some television stations in Canada did not operate digital signals until the digital television transition in Canada in August 2011. The digital broadcasters that were active before then were merely high-definition simulcasts of those stations' existing analog signals in major centres, such as Toronto and Vancouver, with no additional digital subchannels offered. This was because broadcasters declined to carry subchannels, for which CRTC rules required separate licenses. For many years, the Canadian must-carry rules created very little friction between terrestrial broadcasters and cable systems, as providers are allowed to more aggressively implement other digital telecommunications services (like cable internet services and IP telephony) with less overall regulation than their U.S. counterparts. However, in 2008, two of Canada's largest commercial television networks, CTV and Global, began to demand that the CRTC permit them to charge a fee for cable carriage. CBC Television and A-Channel joined the campaign in 2009, alleging that some smaller-market stations would be forced to cease operations if this was not allowed. The CRTC initially rejected these demands, but later re-opened discussion with Canadian broadcasters to allow charging carriage fees. In 2012, a 5–4 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada ultimately ruled the CRTC did not have the authority to permit broadcasters to charge carriage fees from cable and satellite providers.
United States In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates this area of business and public policy pursuant to 47 U.S.C. Part II. These rules were upheld in a 5–4 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1994 in the case Turner Broadcasting v. FCC (95-992). Although cable television service providers routinely carried local affiliates of the major broadcast networks, independent stations and affiliates of minor networks were sometimes not carried, on the premise it would allow cable providers to instead carry non-local programming which they believed would attract more customers to their service. Many cable operators were also equity owners in these cable channels, especially Tele-Communications Inc., then the nation's largest multiple system operator (MSO), and had moved to replace local channels with equity-owned programming (at the time, TCI held a large stake in Discovery Communications). This pressure was especially strong on cable systems with limited bandwidth for channels. The smaller local broadcasters argued that by hampering their access to this increasing segment of the local television audience, this posed a threat to the viability of free-to-view broadcast television, which they argued was a worthy public good. Local broadcast stations also argued cable systems were attempting to serve as a "gatekeeper" in competing unfairly for advertising revenue. Some affiliates of major networks also feared that non-local affiliates might negotiate to provide television programming to local cable services to expand their advertising market, taking away this audience from local stations, with similar adverse impact on free broadcast television. Although cable providers argued that such regulation would impose an undue burden on their flexibility in selecting which services would be most appealing to their customers, the current "must-carry" rules were enacted by the United States Congress in 1992 (via the Cable Television Protection and Competition Act), and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rules in rejecting the arguments of the cable industry and programmers in the majority decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy. That decision also held that MSOs were functioning as a vertically integrated monopoly. A side effect of the must-carry rules is that a broadcast station cannot charge a cable television provider license fees for the program content retransmitted on the cable network under the rule. But note that must-carry is an option of the station and the station may, in lieu of must-carry, negotiate license fees as part of a retransmission consent agreement.
Applicability There are a few exceptions to must-carry, most notably:
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