All-Channel Receiver Act

All-Channel Receiver Act

Long title	An Act to amend the Communications Act of 1934 in order to give the Federal Communications Commission certain regulatory authority over television receiving apparatus.
Acronyms (colloquial)	ACRA
Nicknames	All-Channels Act
Enacted by	the 87th United States Congress
Citations
Public law	Pub. L. 87–529
Statutes at Large	76 Stat. 150
Codification
Acts amended	Communications Act of 1934
Titles amended	47
U.S.C. sections created	47 U.S.C. § 330
U.S.C. sections amended	47 U.S.C. § 303
Legislative history
Signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on July 10, 1962

The All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962 (ACRA) (47 U.S.C. § 303(s)), commonly known as the All-Channels Act, was passed by the United States Congress in 1961, to allow the Federal Communications Commission to require that all television set manufacturers must include UHF tuners, so that new UHF-band TV stations (then channels 14 to 83) could be received by the public. This was a problem at the time since most affiliated stations of the Big Three television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) were well-established on VHF, while many local-only stations on UHF were struggling for survival.

The All-Channel Receiver Act provides that the Federal Communications Commission shall "have authority to require that apparatus designed to receive television pictures broadcast simultaneously with sound be capable of adequately receiving all frequencies allocated by the Commission to television broadcasting."^[1] Under authority provided by the All Channel Receiver Act, the FCC adopted a number of technical standards to increase parity between the UHF and VHF television services, including a 14 dB maximum UHF noise figure for television receivers.