Cite as: 520 U. S. 180 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
majority of systems' decisions not to carry broadcasters. Some broadcasters will opt for must-carry although they would not suffer serious financial harm in its absence. See Time Warner Brief 35-36, and n. 49. Broadcasters with stronger finances tend, however, to be popular ones that ordinarily seek payment from cable systems for transmission, so their reliance on must-carry should be minimal. It appears, for example, that no more than a few hundred of the 500,000 cable channels nationwide are occupied by network affiliates opting for must-carry, see Time Warner Brief 35- 36, and n. 49, a number insufficient to render must-carry "substantially broader than necessary to achieve the government's interest," Ward, supra, at 800. Even on the doubtful assumption that a narrower but still practicable must-carry rule could be drafted to exclude all instances in which the Government's interests are not implicated, our cases establish that content-neutral regulations are not "invalid simply because there is some imaginable alternative that might be less burdensome on speech." Albertini, 472 U. S., at 689; accord, Ward, supra, at 797; Community for Creative Non-Violence, supra, at 299.
Appellants posit a number of alternatives in an effort to demonstrate a less restrictive means to achieve the Government's aims. They ask us, in effect, to "sif[t] through all the available or imagined alternative means of regulating [cable television] in order to determine whether the [Government's] solution was 'the least intrusive means' of achieving the desired end," an approach we rejected in Ward, 491 U. S., at 797. This " 'less-restrictive-alternative analysis . . . has never been a part of the inquiry into the validity' " of content-neutral regulations on speech. Ibid. (quoting Regan v. Time, Inc., 468 U. S. 641, 657 (1984) (plurality opinion) (ellipses in original)). Our precedents establish that when evaluating a content-neutral regulation which incidentally burdens speech, we will not invalidate the preferred remedial scheme because some alternative solution is marginally
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