Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
be offered without a franchise); § 546 (prescribing procedures and standards for renewal). Cf. Brenner § 3.07[9][a] (franchise terms of 15 years are the norm); § 3.07[15] (typical franchise agreements recognize the absolute right of the franchiser to refuse renewal at expiration of term). If the franchise is transferred to another, so is the right of editorial discretion. The cable operator may own the cables transmitting the signal, but it is the franchise—the agreement between the cable operator and the local government—that allocates some channels to the full discretion of the cable operator while reserving others for public access.
In providing public access channels under their franchise agreements, cable operators therefore are not exercising their own First Amendment rights. They serve as conduits for the speech of others. Cf. PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74, 87 (1980). Section 10(c) thus restores no power of editorial discretion over public access channels that the cable operator once had; the discretion never existed. It vests the cable operator with a power under federal law, defined by reference to the content of speech, to override the franchise agreement and undercut the public forum the agreement creates. By enacting a law in 1992 excluding indecent programming from protection but retaining the prohibition on cable operators' editorial control over all other protected speech, the Federal Government at the same time ratified the public-forum character of public access channels but discriminated against certain speech based on its content.
The plurality refuses to analyze public access channels as public fora because it is reluctant to decide "the extent to which private property can be designated a public forum," ante, at 742. We need not decide here any broad issue whether private property can be declared a public forum by simple governmental decree. That is not what happens in the creation of public access channels. Rather, in return for granting cable operators easements to use public rights-of-
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