Sunday, March 14, 2004

IS RADIO under siege?

If you're Bubba the Love Sponge, the recently unemployed Tampa DJ whose show was assessed $715,000 in Federal Communications Commission fines, you'd probably think so. Ditto if you're Clear Channel, Bubba's former bosses, or you're over at Infinity, where Howard Stern is awaiting FCC fines. Clear Channel also dropped Stern's show from six of its stations.

As radio indecency bills make their way through the House and the Senate, we figured it was time to get some perspective on this issue. After all, if NBC affiliates were spared punishment by check when Bono uttered the f-word during a Golden Globes telecast last year, why does your morning rock jock merit attention for raunchy chat? The House bill even proposes fines of $275,000 per indecent act, which penalties going as high as $3 million. The top fine now is $27,500.

"It's ironic," said Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media, a radio consulting firm based in Detroit. "We're talking two days before 'The Sopranos' season five makes its debut (pay cable is not regulated by the FCC), and we all know what's going to be involved with that. But God forbid someone says, 'a--' on morning radio because the show will be fined $250,000."

"It's very interesting that this is all happening in an election year," Alex DeMers, a Philadelphia-based programming consultant said, laughing. "I just woke up to that possibility."

Demers contended radio and TV are being held to different standards. "There have only been three fines (from the FCC) against TV in the history of the agency. I think this is a witch hunt."

The most recent TV fine was assessed to San Francisco TV station KRON. One of the cast members of the show "Puppetry of the Penis" flashed one of the "puppets" briefly on live TV in 2002. The station was fined $27,500. In 2001, WTXF-TV in Philadelphia showed nudity during a morning newscast, but was not fined.

Robert Unmacht, a media consultant and founder of iN3 Partners in Nashville, said the indecency flap only affects a small portion of the industry.

"Most of this is dealing with people trying to attract male listeners 18-34. Modern rock is a huge component of that," Unmacht said. "You're not hearing complaints about mix stations, news talk stations or country stations. The problem is mostly with rock formats, but not all of them."

As for Stern being dropped by the Clear Channel outlets, Unmacht thinks that was as much a matter of economics as content.

"A small station might see Stern as a ticket to ratings success, but his price tag in small markets can be as much as $500,000. With that price, there's no profit even with good ratings."

Sean Ross of Edison Media Research of Somerville said that Sept. 11 may have briefly slowed some broadcasters' pursuit of increasingly edgy material. Radio was needed to console the community, not provoke it, he wrote on Edison's Web site.

But that didn't last long, Ross said. "No long after that, you had Opie and Anthony and the (couple reportedly having sex in) St. Patrick's thing (which happened in August 2002), then some other stunts."

Ross did say, however, that the whole contretemps was an overreaction.

"Not only in the sense that there aren't that many shock jocks per capita, but also because in this post- 'Sex and the City,' post-'Sopranos' world, what adults will tolerate has clearly changed. There are people who want to shield their children from this stuff, but there are as many who are comfortable with edgier material."

Is there really a public outcry about shock jocks and radio? You be the judge. The FCC received 530,885 indecency complaints so far this year. But 530,828 were from Janet Jackson's Super Bowl bust out. Total remaining complaints -- 57.

"If Janet Jackson isn't the world's greatest example of a tipping point, I don't know what is," DeMers said.