The scholarly article, "Perceived Impact of the Cable Policy Act of 1984," published in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media in 1987, described its objective as follows: The new law attempted to strike a delicate balance between the FCC, local governments, and marketplace competition, where in the past, each of these entities had vied for dominance.

The act gave municipalities, governing bodies of cities and towns, principal authority to grant and renew franchise licenses for cable operations.

However, in order to be granted a franchise renewal, the act specified that cable operators' past performances and future proposals had to meet the federal standards in the new title.

[2] In return for establishing franchise standards and procedures, the act specified that cable operators were expected to be receptive to their local communities' needs and interests.

Through this statute, Congress attempted to uphold the First Amendment interest of cable audiences to receive diversified information as specified in the Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission court case of 1969.

[3] This provision declared that state and local authorities should allow, but not mandate, that this type of information be distributed via non-commercial Public, educational, and government access (PEG) cable TV channels.

Cable companies saw the regulation by the federal government as an unlawful intrusion into their business practices and immediately started to challenge its legality.

The National League of Cities (NLC) voided agreements three times because cable companies were freed from rate regulation, given renewal expectancy, and could default on promises in certain circumstances.

On the other hand, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NTCA) voided agreements once because they felt that another Supreme Court ruling would provide the industry with better rate deregulation than under the present FCC regulations or the bill.

It has been highly debated for its effectiveness, because evidence shows that unaffiliated television programming on leased access channels was avoided and rarely appeared.

[9] However, it remained largely in the hands of few local monopolies that were able to determine the content of the programs and set the rates for services and channels on their system.

Many of these outcomes can be attributed to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) interpretation of Congress' mandates, which contained poor choice of language and confusion over the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

[9] Cable consumers' complaints about the outcomes led to policy discussions in the late eighties and early nineties in which public interest was considered but not represented.

[6] Since the act prevented cable operators from regulating publicly generated content, much controversy developed around what was allowed to appear on these channels.

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the law was unconstitutional claiming that cable operators should never be required to act on behalf of the federal government to control expression in relation to content.

[6] Commercial leased access did not provide cable subscribers with a diversity of information as it was required, because it was avoided and never mandated by local franchising authority.