As users flock to iTunes, Hulu and Netflix, TV stations struggle to survive

As the audience for free television fades, federal regulators are wrestling over the future of the government-mandated broadcasts, which were originally intended to knit the nation’s disparate communities together.

Today, only 10 percent of the nation relies on free, over-the-air TV, which was created by the Telecom Act in the 1930s. To get a license, broadcasters had to offer local, educational and political programming, and to make it widely available to rich and poor alike.