242
O'Connor, J., dissenting
by examining the reasonableness of Congress' prediction that adverse carriage decisions will inflict severe harm on broadcast stations.
Nor can we evaluate whether must-carry is necessary to serve an interest in preserving broadcast stations without examining the value of the stations protected by the must-carry scheme to viewers in noncable households. By disregarding the distribution and viewership of stations not carried on cable, the Court upholds the must-carry provisions without addressing the interests of the over-the-air television viewers that Congress purportedly seeks to protect. See Turner, 512 U. S., at 647 (describing interest in "protecting noncable households from loss of regular television broadcasting service" (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted)); id., at 652 (describing interest in ensuring that broadcast television remains available as a source of video programming for those without cable); ante, at 193 (describing interest in preventing "any significant reduction in the multiplicity of broadcast programming sources available to noncable households" (emphasis added)). The Court relies on analyses suggesting that, as of 1992, the typical independent commercial broadcaster was being denied carriage on cable systems serving 47 percent of subscribers in its local market, and the typical noncommercial station was denied carriage on cable systems serving 36 percent of subscribers in its local market. Ante, at 204. The only analysis in the record of the relationship between carriage and noncable viewership favors the appellants. A 1991 study by Federal Trade Commission staff concluded that most cable systems voluntarily carried broadcast stations with any reportable ratings in noncable households and that most instances of noncarriage involved "relatively remote (and duplicated) network stations, or local stations that few viewers watch." Carriage of Television Broadcast Signals by Cable Television Systems, Reply Comment of the Staff of the Bureau of Economics and the San Francisco Re-
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