Cite as: 520 U. S. 180 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
to 25 percent of channel capacity. The parties agree only 14 percent of broadcasters added to cable systems under the Cable Act would be eligible for carriage under the Century rules. See Turner Brief 45; Brief for Federal Appellees 45; NAB Brief 49; see also Declaration of Gregory Klein
¶¶ 21-25 (App. 1141-1143). The Century rules, for the most part, would require carriage of the same stations a system would carry without statutory compulsion. While we acknowledge appellants' criticism of any rationale that more is better, the scheme in question does not place limitless must-carry obligations on cable system operators. In the final analysis this alternative represents nothing more than appellants' " '[dis]agreement with the responsible decisionmaker concerning' . . . the degree to which [the Government's] interests should be promoted." Ward, supra, at 800 (quoting Albertini, supra, at 689); Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U. S., at 299. Congress legislated in the shadow of Quincy Cable TV, Inc. v. FCC, 768 F. 2d 1434 (CADC 1985), and Century Communications. Its deliberations reflect awareness of the must-carry rules at issue in those cases, Senate Report, at 39-41, 62; indeed, in drafting the must-carry provisions of the Cable Act, Congress made specific comparisons to the rules struck down in Quincy, supra. See House Report, at 65-66; Senate Report, at 61. The record reflects a deliberate congressional choice to adopt the present levels of protection, to which this Court must defer.
The second alternative appellants urge is the use of input selector or "A/B" switches, which, in combination with antennas, would permit viewers to switch between cable and broadcast input, allowing cable subscribers to watch broadcast programs not carried on cable. Congress examined the use of A/B switches as an alternative to must-carry and concluded it was "not an enduring or feasible method of distribution and . . . not in the public interest." § 2(a)(18). The data showed that: many households lacked adequate antennas to
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