Timeline Assignment - 2006
- FCC ends "Freeze" on new television station licenses
- Dumont network ceases operation
- President Bill Clinton signs Telecommunications Act
- President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Public Television Act
- Time Inc. launches Home Box Office (HBO) in New York City
- Music Television (MTV) launched
- Discovery Channel launched
- NBC sells its "Blue" network to Edward J. Noble, who forms American Broadcasting Company
- Arthur Judson partners with Columbia Phonograph Company and forms Columbia Broadcasting System
- Radio Corporation of America launches National Broadcasting Company
- FCC chairman Mark Fowler calls television a "toaster with pictures."
- FCC chairman Newton Minow calls television a "vast wasteland"
- Disney begins producing Disneyland USA to air on ABC Disney purchases ABC/Capital Cities
- Congress mandates cable companies to sell its services to competitors such DBS, under the Cable Act
- Final episode of M*A*S*H earns a 60.2 rating
- Fairness Doctrine dissolved
- FCC mandates Financial Interest and Syndication Rules (Fin-Syn) and Prime-Time Access Rule (PTAR)
- AOL acquires Time Warner
- The United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization publishes report Many Voices, One World (McBride Report)
- UPN and WB television networks launched
- Fox begins broadcasting as a network
- CNN launched
- Fox begins airing The Simpsons
- Telstar launched
- Rupert Murdoch becomes US Citizen to comply with FCC's media ownership laws
- Primestar begins operating an analog direct-to-home satellite service on the medium-power Ku band
- DirecTV, a high-power Ku satellite service, introduced to US market
- Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) introduces MPEG-4 as a standard for multimedia applications
- The local operations of AT&T began operating as seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC)