Mr. S£im Citrus said:
It's not overly broad, because you're overlooking something that a lot of people, with the latest advancements in televsion technologies, take for granted nowadays: "Basic" cable is not free.
But I still think that you're splitting hairs. As hard as it was for me to believe, until becoming re-acquainted with some of my more rural relatives, everyone in the United States does not have cable television. If you want to get right down to it, the only channels that are "truly" broadcast are those that you can pick up with nothing but a plain-old TV and an antenna. If I pull down the old 13-inch Black and White w/antenna job that I had in college back in the early nineties from my attic, and just plug it into the wall, I'll get network televsion (ABC, NBC, CBS, UPN, WB) and local affiliates/public access. That's broadcast.
And, technically, it *is* all broadcast. It's just a question of whether it's encrypted or unencrypted. My point is that, although many of us have come to take it for granted, "basic" cable is *still* encrypted. Nearly all televisions available today are designed to be able to decrypt these signals without the need for a cable box, but it's still encrypted, and you still have to pay for it. "Basic" cable is not free, and trying to represent it as such, while claiming that you have to pay for services like NBA TV, is misleading.
The FCC doesn't really have any jurisdiction over cable television, either: Ad dollars have MUCH more influence, and ad dollars are highly influenced by the "moral majority." Nearly all cable companies end up following FCC guidelines, not out of obligation, but out of fear of losing ad revenue. There is, theoretically speaking, nothing whatsoever preventing USA network from showing the same content as Cinemax or the Spice channel.
