KLSX Owner Responds to FCC’s Howard Stern Fine

Greater Media Inc., the company that owns Los Angeles radio station KLSX-FM, has filed a 38-page response with the Federal Communications Commission protesting its record $105,000 fine for permitting the broadcast of allegedly indecent material during Howard Stern’s bawdy morning show. The company contended that unsupervised children do not listen to Stern’s show and that indecent speech is protected by the First Amendment.

The fine, levied in October, cited objectionable material culled from 12 days of broadcasts between Oct. 31 and Dec. 6, 1991. It was based on a complaint filed by Las Vegas-based musician Al Westcott, who said he wanted to clean up the airwaves for children.

Some of the cited material included discussions of sexual acts, masturbation, Santa Claus fondling children, a technique for elongating the male sexual organ and Stern concocting a fictional rape and castration of two Los Angeles radio competitors.

Greater Media states in its response that because indecent speech is constitutionally protected, the commission is permitted to regulate broadcast indecency only for the purpose of “protecting unsupervised children from exposure to indecent material. The government cannot regulate broadcast indecency in order to accommodate the sensibilities of some adult viewers and listeners.”

Therefore, it asks that the fine be rescinded based on the lack of children in Stern’s audience and cites a study commissioned by the broadcasting company that randomly sampled 916 children between the ages of 2 and 12, and found only two who listen to Stern’s program outside the presence of parents or other adults.

“KLSX presents herein the results of a scientifically designed study conducted by independent experts in child research which has decisively determined that unsupervised children are virtually absent from the Howard Stern Morning Program audience in the Los Angeles metro area,” the response said.

“The survey reveals that during the morning ‘drive time period’ 99.9% of all persons under age 18 are subject to parental or other adult supervision, at school, or asleep.”

The response does acknowledge that Stern’s show draws some teen listeners but contends that “their presence would not justify enforcement action.”

Westcott, who filed the complaint, dismisses the survey results. “That’s like letting the fox do a survey of the chicken coop,” he said. “It’s their own survey. Of course, it’s going to be biased. Nine hundred people represents a very, very small fraction of Stern’s total listening audience. Stern is heard in 10 cities and there are literally millions and millions of people who have access to his program. They probably sampled less than 1% of their audience. Let’s do a fair sample. . . . Also, it’s not a matter of how many children may be in the audience. It’s a matter that it is accessible to children. The law does not put a number on it. If there’s one child (listening) then I suggest that’s one child too many.”

Greater Media’s reply also states that the excerpts cited “amount to less than 30 minutes of programming culled from over 50 hours of the Howard Stern show and comprise less than 1% of the cited broadcasts.”

Stern, whose show is No. 1 in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia and heard in seven other cities, has said on the air that he believes this fine--and a more recent one levied by the commission for $600,000 against the other stations that aired the same programs--are the result of a personal vendetta against him by FCC Commissioner Al Sikes.

Commission spokesmen said they have received the response and are taking it into consideration.