826
Opinion of Thomas, J.
to expand the speaking opportunities of access programmers, but does not independently burden the First Amendment rights of programmers or viewers.
C
Petitioners argue that public access channels are public forums in which they have First Amendment rights to speak and that § 10(c) is invalid because it imposes content-based burdens on those rights. Brief for Petitioners New York Citizens Committee for Responsible Media et al. in No. 95- 227, pp. 8-23; Brief for Petitioners Alliance for Community Media et al. in No. 95-227, pp. 32-35. Though I agree that content-based prohibitions in a public forum "must be narrowly drawn to effectuate a compelling state interest," Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 460 U. S. 37, 46 (1983), I do not agree with petitioners' antecedent assertion that public access channels are public forums.
We have said that government may designate public property for use by the public as a place for expressive activity and that, so designated, that property becomes a public forum. Id., at 45. Petitioners argue that "[a] local government does exactly that by requiring as a condition of franchise approval that the cable operator set aside a public access channel for the free use of the general public on a first-come, first-served, nondiscriminatory basis." 9
9 In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 829-830 (1995), we found the university's student activity fund, a nontangible channel of communication, to be a limited public forum, but generally we have been quite reluctant to find even limited public forums in such channels of communication. Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 U. S. 788, 804 (1985) (Combined Federal Campaign not a limited public forum); Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 460 U. S. 37, 47-48 (1983) (school mail facilities not a limited public forum). In any event, we certainly have never held that public access channels are a fully designated public forum that entitles programmers to freedom from content-based distinctions.
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