Cable TV franchises
Probably one of the biggest sources of local graft for decades.
And then small dish sat tv came in. And high speed interent from the phone companies.
Perhaps the whole thing should have been run as public monopolies in the first place, but the Congress specifically ruled that out by forbidding localities from doing that.
There would not have been any XXX channels or Playboy channel with public monopolies, or XXX features on HBO, for that matter.