Friday, Sep 5, 2008
The Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake halftime performance at the Super Bowl on Feb. 1, featuring her infamous "wardrobe malfunction," kicked off the recent reaction. But the truth is that the incident was simply a flashpoint for a host of political, economic and cultural forces that have been waiting to explode.
Not only is the current debate unfolding during an election year, it comes on the heels of last year's bitter FCC debate over media consolidation, which created political problems for broadcasting giants like Clear Channel. "It's impossible to separate the [current controversy] from the business world and election-year politics," says Michael Bracy, director of government relations for the Future of Music Coalition, a Washington artist rights lobby. "There are so many things at play, it's difficult to determine who's pushing what buttons."
The irony is that it was two televised pop culture moments that created the uproar over broadcast indecency. But radio -- and specifically Stern -- have taken the brunt of the enforcement crackdown. Early last year U2 lead singer Bono used the F-word during a cheeky acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Awards show, crowing, "This is fucking brilliant." Then Janet Jackson did her Super Bowl dance.
For Stern, who hadn't been fined by the FCC in nearly a decade despite his daily raunchy shtick, the unexpected turn of events could mean the end of his broadcast career. The specter of further fines may make it impossible for him to maintain a syndicated audience. Still, according to some industry observers, some radio programmers will try to hold onto his show as long as they can. "Morning shows are hard to find and morning shows that effective are even harder to find," says Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research and the former radio editor at Billboard magazine. "I'd guess a lot of people will hold onto him as long as it's at all tenable."
The key is "tenable." If new penalties are passed by Congress, which would allow the FCC to levy fines of $27,500 per indecency violation, and if the commission regularly finds multiple violations within one program, as it did in last week's Stern ruling, and if a company carries Stern's show on six stations, then one indecency episode could cost a broadcaster $5 million, not to mention the possibility of losing the station license. The price of an FM license in major market today can surpass $200 million.
"In effect, the FCC's creating an atmosphere where nobody can afford to carry him because the possible fines are so expensive," says one industry veteran and former station owner. "The legal-brief-to-ad-dollars ratio is not even close. They'll shut his ass down."
The recent barrage of fines has galvanized Stern, turning the former Republican sympathizer into a fierce critic of not just the FCC but of President Bush as well. "I strategize more about my radio show than Bush does about the war in Iraq," Stern quipped on Monday. The jock claims Bush has sold out to the religious right and ordered the FCC to crack down on broadcasters to appease this political base. He saves many of his most stinging barbs these days for Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose fundamentalist critique of popular culture puts Stern in mind of the black-robed jihadis America is fighting in the Middle East.
Yet the politics of indecency are not so simple. For years, it has been the two Democratic FCC commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, who pressed for tougher indecency fines, while Powell, a libertarian-leaning Republican, adopted a more hands-off, let-the-marketplace-decide approach to the problem. During the fierce debate last summer about whether the FCC should allow even further media consolidation -- a trend that Powell supports -- the Democratic commissioners argued that rampant consolidation had already led to raunchier programming, particularly in radio, where corporate owners rarely operate locally and often aren't sensitive to community standards.
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