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Fcc has fword for stern { April 9 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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FCC Has a Big F-Word for Stern, Clear Channel
Mon Apr 12, 2004 10:18 AM ET
By Brooks Boliek
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - In its continuing fight to clean up the airwaves, the nation's broadcast police announced last week their intention to levy one of the largest fines ever on Clear Channel Communications for a broadcast of "The Howard Stern Show."
On a 5-0 vote Thursday, the FCC issued a "notice of apparent liability" in which it proposed fining the station group $495,000 for an April 9, 2003, broadcast in which Stern and two guests discussed a product called "Sphincterine," which is designed to get rid of "swamp ass."
As a result of the fine, Clear Channel fired Stern on Thursday, making permanent the suspension it issued earlier this year.
The notice is the fourth-largest single notice issued by the commission for a single program. Infinity Broadcasting Corp. settled with the FCC over a series of four complaints against Stern in 1995 for $1.7 million. Of those, there were notices for $600,000 and $500,000. Earlier this year, Clear Channel paid a $715,000 fine for a broadcast by Bubba the Love Sponge -- a radio host that the group also canned.
"Today's decision is a step forward toward imposing meaningful fines," said FCC commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat appointee to the FCC.
In a statement posted on his Web site, http://www.howardstern.com, Stern said the action is part of a "McCarthy-type witch hunt" that was being led by the Bush administration and "this group of presidential appointees in the FCC, led by 'Colin Powell Jr."' FCC chairman Michael Powell is the secretary of state's son.
"They and others (a senator from Missouri and a congresswoman from New Mexico) are expressing and imposing their opinions and rights to tell us all who and what we may listen to a watch and how we should think about our lives," he wrote, referring to Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.
He also said the current climate will lead to other actions.
"It's hard to reconcile this with the 'land of the free' and the 'home of the brave,"' he wrote. "I'm sure what's next is the removal of 'dirty pictures' like the 20th century German exhibit in a New York City Museum and the erotic literature in our libraries; they too will fall into their category of 'evil' as well."
Stern's agent, Don Buchwald, issued a warning to the rest of the entertainment industry: Don't think this is only Stern's fight, he told The Hollywood Reporter.
"This not just an attack on Howard but on the entire creative community -- artists, performers and broadcasters everywhere," he said. "It's not only Howard as a lightning rod, but that significant parts of our rights are being wrecked."
Said Clear Channel president and CEO John Hogan, "Mr. Stern's show has created a great liability for us and other broadcasters who air it. The Congress and the FCC are even beginning to look at revoking station licenses. That's a risk we're just not willing to take."
Hopes that Stern would clean up his act so that the company could put the popular shock jock back on the half-dozen Clear Channel stations they pulled him from in February were dashed. Stern is carried on about 40 stations nationwide, 18 of which are owned by Infinity, which is owned by Viacom Inc.
"We had hoped to return Mr. Stern's show to the air free from indecent content," Hogan said. "Unfortunately, the FCC's latest action, combined with deafening silence from the Stern show on their future plans to comply with the law, leaves us no choice but to abandon the program for good."
The fine comes as Congress and the FCC have taken on a renewed interest in cleaning up the airwaves after Janet Jackson's breast was bared during the Super Bowl halftime show this year. The halftime show, along with several utterances of variations of the F-word on TV and the increasing coarseness of shock jocks like Stern have sparked the crackdown.
Last month, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation that would increase the FCC's ability to fine indecent behavior broadcast on radio and TV as much as $500,000 per incident. The fine could be levied against the holder of the broadcast license and the individual who did the deed.
Efforts last week to rush a vote on similar legislation in the Senate died when GOP leaders could not win an agreement from senators that they would not add amendments or debate the bill. Lawmakers had hoped to approve the Brownback-sponsored bill before they left for the three-week spring recess.
While the maximum fine for a single indecency violation currently is $27,500, the FCC can levy a fine for each station on which the broadcast was aired if there is a history of airing indecent speech. The commission did both in this case.
As defined by the FCC and the courts, material is indecent if it "in context, depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium." While the Supreme Court has ruled that the public has a right to indecent speech, it has said that the government can limit speech to protect children. Indecent speech is allowed between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., a time when the underage audience is negligible.
In addition to the action against Clear Channel, the FCC also affirmed its March 17 decision on a 4-1 vote to fine Emmis Communications $14,000 for a broadcast of "Mancow's Morning Madness" in which sex between a 27-year-old man and a 9-year-old child was discussed on the air.
FCC commissioner Copps said the decision did not go far enough.
"Such fines will be easily absorbed as a 'cost of doing business,"' he said. "Our enforcement actions should send a message that licensees cannot ignore their responsibility to serve the public interest and to protect children."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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