Clear Channel boss is shocked -- shocked -- to find indecency!

After years of profiting from some of the most vulgar shows on radio, the broadcast behemoth has suddenly turned puritanical. It couldn't have anything to do with those congressional hearings, could it?

By Eric Boehlert

Feb. 27, 2004 | Strange things happen when top executives from Clear Channel Communications are called to testify before Congress.

In January 2003, CEO Lowry Mays was summoned before the Senate Commerce Committee where he was grilled about Clear Channel's sprawling radio, concert and billboard empire and about longstanding allegations that it engaged in anti-competitive business practices. Mays was also pressed about charges of pay for play, or payola, and the clout of indie promoters, the music industry middlemen who cash in by getting songs played on the radio.

Weeks later, as talk of a separate congressional hearing on payola persisted, Clear Channel shocked the industry when it announced it was ending all its exclusive, lucrative contracts with indies. "We have zero tolerance for 'pay for play,'" Mays announced. No congressional hearing on payola was ever held.

Fast-forward one year to this week, when Clear Channel Radio president John Hogan was set to face hostile congressional questioning on broadcast indecency, spurred in part by the scandalous Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake halftime performance at the Super Bowl. Again Clear Channel took the initiative and stunned the industry in recent days by launching an unprecedented, zero tolerance indecency crackdown.

On Tuesday, the company announced that it had fired its top-rated Tampa, Fla., shock jock, Bubba the Love Sponge, who was recently fined $755,000 by the Federal Communications Commission for indecency violations. Then, on Wednesday, Clear Channel dropped the bomb, severing all ties with pioneering morning shock jock Howard Stern, labeling his syndicated show "vulgar, offensive and insulting," and kicking the jock off six Clear Channel stations.

The move against Stern is largely symbolic. Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting -- a Clear Channel competitor -- is Stern's syndicator and main radio vehicle. But the pattern seems clear: Clear Channel turns a deaf ear to continuous complaints about its rampant consolidation and hardball business practices, but when Capitol Hill shows interest, the company springs into action.

"They don't want to be before Congress and they don't want to be an issue in Washington because it's bad for business," says Robert Unmacht, former publisher of the radio publication M Street Journal. "I have a tough time giving them credit for this indecency initiative because I think it's all a reaction to Congress."

"I guess the question is more a catechism one," adds Arthur Belendiuk, a Washington telecommunications attorney. "Are they doing the right thing because they want to, or because they fear eternal damnation? Either way, they're doing the right thing, and it's a breath of fresh air."

It was Belendiuk's FCC indecency complaint, filed on behalf of a Florida listener, that lead to the $755,000 fine against Bubba the Love Sponge for 26 violations of the agency's indecency standards. The disc jockey, whose real name is Todd Clem, has long been criticized for a program rich in explicit sex and drug content. One infamous show featured a detailed sexual discussion carried out by performers whose voices sounded like the cartoon characters George Jetson, Scooby Doo and Alvin the Chipmunk.

Clear Channel, dubbed by some radio insiders as the Evil Empire and once known for its raunchy, frat-boy style of no-holds-barred radio -- both on the air and off -- suddenly has recast itself as the maverick industry reformer. That's the same Clear Channel where a market manager once offered this simple advice to Web designers working on station sites: "Tits equals hits." And the same company at which a former DJ once told Salon: "When I think of Clear Channel, I think vicious, malicious and salacious."

Why the facelift? The climate for broadcasters has turned ugly in Washington, where Congress has introduced legislation increasing the FCC's power to enforce standards and raising the maximum fine from $27,500 to $275,000. If those penalties had been in effect this year, Clem's recent fine would have cost Clear Channel $7.5 million, instead of $755,000. One Democratic FCC commissioner, Michael J. Copps, dissented on the Clem fine, insisting Clear Channel's offending stations (Clem's show is syndicated) should have instead been brought before the commission to decide whether their licenses should be revoked. That's the ultimate broadcasting death sentence, and one FCC commissioners have rarely even discussed in public. Losing just one FM broadcast license in a major market would cost Clear Channel tens of millions of dollars.

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