INDECENCY Clear Channel drops Stern from its stations

In a Web site statement, Stern said the FCC crackdown was 'shocking.'
LOS ANGELES TIMES
WASHINGTON -- The nation's largest radio chain booted shock jock Howard Stern off its stations Thursday after regulators proposed fining the company $495,000 for airing Stern's sexually explicit broadcasts.
The Federal Communications Commission cited Clear Channel Communications Inc. for "willfully broadcasting indecent material" last April on stations in San Diego and five other cities. The FCC said the broadcasts included "repeated, graphic and explicit sexual descriptions that were pandering, titillating or used to shock the audience."
The fine was the third six-figure penalty levied this year against Clear Channel, which owns 1,200 stations and earned $1.1 billion in 2003. In January, the FCC fined Clear Channel a record $715,000 for broadcasts by a disc jockey known as Bubba the Love Sponge. In March, the agency imposed a $247,500 fine on the company's "Elliot in the Morning" broadcasts.
Cleaning up
Clear Channel has taken steps in recent months to clean up its programming.
It stopped running Bubba the Love Sponge broadcasts, and in March it temporarily suspended the Stern show carried on six of its stations. Thursday's decision makes the move permanent, Clear Channel Radio President John Hogan said.
"Mr. Stern's show has created a great liability for us and other broadcasters who air it," Hogan said. "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."
Stern's show is syndicated by Infinity Broadcasting, and the FCC on Thursday ordered its staff to investigate Infinity's broadcasts of the April 9, 2003, show. Infinity carries Stern on 18 stations.
Response
Stern could not be reached to comment, but in a statement posted on his Web site, he likened the government sanctions to a "McCarthy type 'witch hunt'" by the Bush administration.
"It is pretty shocking that governmental interference into our rights and free speech takes place in the U.S.," Stern wrote. "It's hard to reconcile this with the 'land of the free' and the 'home of the brave.'"
The FCC, which has issued about $4 million in indecency fines since 1990, has intensified its scrutiny of broadcasters as lawmakers have pressed for stricter rules, particularly since Janet Jackson's infamous breast-baring during the Super Bowl halftime show.
The House has approved a bill to increase penalties for obscene, indecent and profane broadcasts. The measure is pending in the Senate.
"Janet Jackson was really the straw that broke the camel's back," said Howard Liberman, a former FCC staff attorney now in private practice in Washington. "Now the three Republicans on the FCC are joining the two Democrats" on the commission "who have been pushing this indecency issue for a long time."
The crackdown cheers FCC Democrat Michael K. Copps, who has long championed tighter monitoring of the airwaves. The FCC's fine also was praised by the conservative watchdog group Parents Television Council.