The policy act that restricted city authority to regulate basic fees unless receiving three or fewer local over-the-air channels is associated with which year?

• A. 1992
• B. 1984
• C. 1988
• D. 2005

Answer: (B)

The main idea here is understanding when local governments could regulate basic cable rates. In 1984, Congress passed the Cable Communications Policy Act, which limited how much authority cities had to set or cap basic cable fees. A key detail tied to this act is a threshold based on local over-the-air channels: when a market had three or fewer local OTA channels, regulators could intervene to oversee basic rates; with more local channels, federal preemption reduced local control. This specific provision—the linkage of rate regulation to the three-channel threshold—belongs to the 1984 act, not the later ones. So the year associated with this policy is 1984.