Cite as: 518 U. S. 727 (1996)
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
the programmer on regular cable channels. The operator thus has already decided for any number of reasons not to carry the programmer. For example, the operator may believe that the programmer might compete with programming that the [operator] owns or controls. To permit the operator to establish the leased access rate thus makes little sense." Ibid.
Perhaps some operators will choose to show the indecent programming they now may banish if they can command a better price than other access programmers are willing to pay. In the main, however, leased access programs are the ones the cable operator, for competitive reasons or otherwise, has no interest in showing. And because the cable operator may put to his own commercial use any leased access capacity not taken by unaffiliated programmers, 47 U. S. C. § 532(b)(4), operators have little incentive to allow indecent programming if they have excess capacity on leased access channels.
There is even less reason to think cable operators will choose to show indecent programs on public access channels. The operator is not paid, or paid much, for transmitting programs on these channels; public access programs may compete with the operator's own programs; the operator will wish to avoid unwanted controversy; and here, as with leased access channels, the operator may reclaim unused PEG capacity for its own paid use, 47 U. S. C. § 531(d)(1).
In the 1992 Act, Congress recognized cable operators might want to exclude unaffiliated or otherwise disfavored programmers from their channels, but it granted operators discretion to do so in regard to but a single category of speech. The obvious consequence invited by the discretion is exclusion. I am not sure why the plurality would suppose otherwise, or contend the practical consequences of § 10(a) would be no worse for programmers than those flowing from the sort of time-segregation requirement approved in Pacifica. See ante, at 746-747. Despite its claim of making
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