It mosty is, but it’s joined at the hip with state ownership and control of terrestrial channels. Say you want to open a new radio - in UK you cannot just buy freq space, you must also submit a request to ofcom to justify what you’re going to use it for and why you think there is a demand for that. You also have to pledge a certain ratio of your content to public service (usually news bulletins, but also homegrown productions and so on) and a bunch of other stuff. This ensures your channel submission to certain rules, which ofcom can then enforce later (“you described news as a public service content, but they are too biased to be that - fix it or we retire your license”). For terrestrial TV controls are even stricter (although to be fair Channel 5 is constantly pushing the envelope in terms of showing as most cheap crap as possible), two out of 5 channels are state-run (bbc), at least one is state-owned (channel 4) although run independently, and then there are itv and c5 which are a mixture of public and private ownership if i remember correctly (feel free to correct me, i’ve not looked at them in a while). I expect most of the actual infrastructure is state-owned by now (ITV was the only company with some of that, back in the day). In such a scenario, applying direct and indirect pressure to comply is much easier than having to go through the courts. And of course, movie censorship is alive and well in this country…
For comparison, another scenario of heavy regulation I’m familiar with (Italy) is a complete shitshow. The infrastructure is mostly private, so private companies were able to basically flout the law for decades - they just applied political pressure to keep enforcement to nil.
In the US, the scale and typology of broadcasters’ ownership is so dramatically different, and so heavily stacked to private ownership, that I don’t see how you could enforce strong regulation without being so politically draconian that people on one side would quickly cry totalitarianism. Then again you seem to manage as soon as female breasts show up, so maybe it’s doable…
