Stern Foe Calls Fine a ‘Victory’ for Kids : Radio: Musician Al Westcott feels vindicated after his crusade against the raunchy talk-show host results in a record FCC penalty.

Al Westcott expressed elation Wednesday that his obsessive, three-month crusade to document what offended him about Howard Stern’s popular radio program had hit pay dirt.

“I consider it to be a mammoth victory--not for me and not against Howard Stern but purely on behalf of the children of the country,” Westcott declared in a telephone interview from his home in Las Vegas. “I know how that sounds, but I don’t mean it from any glorious position at all. I think it sends a real strong message to broadcasters.”

Westcott, 45, a musician and Vietnam veteran, was reacting to the record fine of $105,000 for indecent broadcasting that was levied Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission against Greater Media Inc., the company that owns KLSX-FM (97.1), which broadcasts Stern’s show in Los Angeles. The fine was based on 19 pages of single-spaced transcripts in a complaint filed by Westcott.

Westcott, who has a 23-year-old son and a 2-year-old granddaughter, donned what he called his “gladiator hat” last year while he was living in Torrance, Calif. He took a dislike to Stern’s morning talk show and undertook a one-man campaign to get it off the air.

His initial efforts involved contacting about 20 of Stern’s advertisers, providing them excerpts of the broadcasts. About 12 of them pulled out of the show, he said.

He then embarked on an effort to document that the program violates the FCC’s indecency regulations, which prohibit “material that depicts or describes in a manner that is patently offensive under community standards for the broadcast medium sexual or excretory functions, activities or organs.”

Many such complaints are tossed out by the FCC because they are incomplete or don’t include transcripts and taped broadcasts. Westcott, however, inundated the commission with material from 12 days in October, November and December of 1991.

“I’d get up early and I’d run the tape machine, then just before I’d leave for work I’d put in another 120-minute tape and let it run,” he said. “I’d work my 8 hours and come home and spend another 5, 6, 7 hours reviewing the tapes and transcribing longhand. On the weekends I’d type up the transcripts. . . . It absolutely consumed me for three months.”

In addition to his concern for children, Westcott said that he is personally offended by Stern’s show.

“I’m offended first of all that he can come into my home with such material,” he said. “There would be no doubt in anyone’s mind, even among the most liberal of thinkers, that some of the things that I cited were absolutely beyond the realm of good taste. . . . Secondly, I’m offended for the women of the country. He gets women to come to his studio to disrobe and be spanked on the air. I think his material is offensive to women and minorities and I know it’s offensive to children. As an adult I find Mr. Stern lacking any social or morally redeeming values.”

Among the material cited by the FCC in levying its fine against KLSX were comments and discussions about masturbation, castration, defecation, sexual fantasies and Santa Claus fondling children.

“I do defend Mr. Stern’s right of free speech provided it doesn’t infringe on other areas of law and rules and regulations--particularly, in this case, FCC regulations,” Westcott said.

Though heartened by the message sent by the fine, Westcott believes the matter could be tied up for years with legal appeals, as has happened with a 1987 FCC action against three stations carrying Stern’s program. For a broadcast company, he said, $105,000 “is really a drop in the bucket and it could be litigated for another five or 10 years, and that’s the real sad thing.”

He also acknowledged that the FCC’s fine may serve to increase Stern’s popularity by focusing media attention on him. But he said that he is steadfast in his mission and plans to undertake his taping, transcribing and documentation effort again in Las Vegas, where Stern’s program debuts Nov. 9.

Stern, meanwhile, was uncharacteristically subdued about the fine on his program Wednesday morning, saying he would reserve direct comment until today’s show. As he has in the past, however, he maintained that the FCC is trying to force him off the air and argued that the marketplace--meaning listeners and advertisers--should be allowed to determine whether he succeeds or fails.