When does the government stop being broadcast television

The Pentagon plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan on an online platform. FCC chairman Brendan Carr says that's not his department. When pressed on whether broadcast networks could air the footage on traditional television, Carr deferred to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—ceding regulatory territory without a fight. The official language is jurisdictional courtesy. What actually happened is the FCC didn't lose its authority over broadcast television. It voluntarily classified the new thing as something else.

This is the move the agency perfected in the 1970s when cable television emerged. Cable wasn't broadcast, the FCC reasoned, so it didn't need the same rules. The exemption was tidy and logical. It was also a capitulation that let an entire medium grow unregulated for twenty years.

By the time the Cable Act arrived in 1992, the industry had built itself on the assumption of minimal oversight. The Act clawed back some authority, but cable had already consolidated power that broadcast never held. The regulatory structure had hardened around the exemption. What looked like a technical classification had become the foundation of an industry.

Carr's deference to Hegseth follows the same template. The execution will livestream on a Pentagon platform—not broadcast television, so not the FCC's concern. The next administration can cite this precedent when it hosts classified briefings, protest footage, or whatever content it wants beyond regulatory reach on a custom platform. The FCC didn't lose its authority. It established that new platforms are someone else's problem by definition. Regulators rarely get back territory once they've announced they don't occupy it. The government doesn't need to overturn the FCC's power. It just needs the FCC to keep agreeing that whatever comes next isn't really television anymore.