Cite as: 512 U. S. 622 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
viewed in the abstract, we have no difficulty concluding that each of them is an important governmental interest. Ibid.
In the Communications Act of 1934, Congress created a system of free broadcast service and directed that communications facilities be licensed across the country in a "fair, efficient, and equitable" manner. Communications Act of 1934, § 307(b), 48 Stat. 1083, 47 U. S. C. § 307(b). Congress designed this system of allocation to afford each community of appreciable size an over-the-air source of information and an outlet for exchange on matters of local concern. United States v. Southwestern Cable Co., 392 U. S. 157, 173-174 (1968); Wollenberg, The FCC as Arbiter of "The Public Interest, Convenience, and Necessity," in A Legislative History of the Communications Act of 1934, pp. 61, 62-70 (M. Paglin ed. 1989). As we recognized in Southwestern Cable, supra, the importance of local broadcasting outlets "can scarcely be exaggerated, for broadcasting is demonstrably a principal source of information and entertainment for a great part of the Nation's population." Id., at 177. The interest in maintaining the local broadcasting structure does not evaporate simply because cable has come upon the scene. Although cable and other technologies have ushered in alternatives to broadcast television, nearly 40 percent of American households still rely on broadcast stations as their exclusive source of television programming. And as we said in Capital Cities Cable, Inc. v. Crisp, "protecting noncable households from loss of regular television broadcasting service due to competition from cable systems" is an important federal interest. 467 U. S., at 714.
Likewise, assuring that the public has access to a multiplicity of information sources is a governmental purpose of the highest order, for it promotes values central to the First Amendment. Indeed, " 'it has long been a basic tenet of national communications policy that "the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." ' " United
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