THE MEDIA : Radio Group May Revive Programming Guidelines

The National Assn. of Broadcasters, responding to a federal regulator’s suggestion to curb “shock radio,” said Thursday that it is considering reviving radio and TV program codes that were dropped under government pressure in the 1970s.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Alfred Sikes, in an address to a radio broadcasters’ convention in New Orleans last week, urged radio executives to tune out “shock radio” programs that use sexually and racially oriented humor to attract audiences.

Sikes said broadcasters should revive the codes that were abandoned in the mid-1970s after the Justice Department initiated an antitrust lawsuit against provisions of the codes involving advertising. New codes should be drawn up by the industry, without government pressure, Sikes said.

NAB spokesman Walt Wurfel said the NAB’s executive committee, “in response to comments made by Chairman Sikes at Radio 89 (convention), . . . instructed the staff to conduct an assessment of the feasibility, effectiveness, legal and legislative elements of--and member support for--devising a statement of standards or guidelines concerning programming in the public interest.”

Sikes, a former radio station owner who came to the FCC six weeks ago, told the broadcasters’ convention they were not “simply recorders, transmitters and antennas. We are what we broadcast.”

He noted that on Aug. 24, the FCC announced it was considering action against three radio stations in Chicago, San Jose and Indianapolis for possibly broadcasting indecent programming during daytime hours when children may have been listening.

That action was widely viewed as a shot across the bow of broadcasters from a new, no-nonsense FCC. Sikes, along with new Commissioners Andrew Barrett and Sherrie Marshall, faced tough questioning during their Senate confirmation hearings in July on what they proposed to do about indecency on the airwaves.

Wurfel said the NAB was a little gun-shy regarding new broadcasting codes in light of the Justice Department attack on the old codes.

“We don’t desire to get into any further antitrust action,” Wurfel said, adding that NAB also has to weigh First Amendment concerns and community concerns.

Wurfel said it was too early to tell if programmers or other broadcast or cable television groups would get involved in NAB’s feasibility study.

The House earlier this year passed a bill that would give the television industry a three-year antitrust exemption so it can try to adopt voluntary guidelines on violence.

The Senate passed a similar measure that added antitrust exemption for guidelines on portrayals drug use and sex, and differences in the two bills are now being worked out in a House-Senate conference committee.