Various villains seen in the increase of indecency
Just days after the Federal Communications Commission slapped its biggest indecency fine in three years on a Detroit radio station, the agency’s chairman said competition is partly to blame for what seems to be increasing lewdness on the airwaves.
“If you’re on the air and not willing to do the things to draw the audience’s interest, the guy next door is,” FCC chairman Michael Powell said Wednesday during the National Assn. of Broadcasters annual convention, held this week in Las Vegas.
The week before, the agency ordered WKRK-FM in Detroit to pay a $27,500 fine for airing a program that included graphic discussions of defecation, violence, and oral and anal sex.
Infinity Radio, the parent company of WKRK, admitted to the broadcast, according to FCC documents, but said it shouldn’t have to pay the fine because the agency’s definition of indecency is unconstitutionally vague.
In its order to the station, the FCC said the offending segment, which occurred Jan. 9, 2002, during the afternoon “Deminski & Doyle Show,” was egregious enough to warrant more than the minimum $7,000 fine, and threatened that further serious violations could result in the station forfeiting its license.
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps voted against the fine, however, opposing Powell and his three fellow commissioners. He said it wasn’t punishment enough for what he called “some of the most vulgar and disgusting indecency that I have had the misfortune to examine since I joined the commission.”
His sentiment was echoed by the Parents Television Council, a consumer watchdog group that monitors TV and radio for sex, violence and indecency. It ridiculed the fine as “pocket change” to Infinity and called for WKRK’s license to be revoked for “one of the worst outrages in broadcast history.”
Copps blames the coarsening of the airwaves on industry consolidation, not competition as Powell believes, for what he calls “the race to the bottom.” Copps argues that as large chains gobble up radio stations from local owners, the executives who influence the programming are farther removed from the communities the stations serve and not constrained by local mores.
This debate comes in the middle of the FCC’s effort to rewrite its ownership rules, the regulations decreeing the quantity and combinations of radio and television stations, print media and Internet outlets a company can own. Infinity, for example, also owns seven radio stations in the Southland, while its parent, Viacom, owns two television stations -- one more than the total of eight allowed in the current rules. So the company is working to place station KFWB-AM (980) in the hands of a trustee until the new ownership rules are defined, by the June 2 deadline set by Powell.
Critics of the FCC and Powell, who tends toward deregulation, expect the agency to loosen ownership limits in the new rules. They say the resulting further consolidation will drain the airwaves of diversity. Deregulation proponents, however, argue that consolidation improves listeners’ choices, by having a single owner trying to reach a broad audience spectrum, instead of several owners aiming for the same listeners.
The FCC’s threat about revoking licenses in indecency cases is not one most stations need to worry about, said Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Assn. of Broadcasters.
“It’s the commission’s intent to send a message,” he said. “We, as an industry, play by the rules. There might be an aberration, rarely. We obviously don’t condone any indecent or obscene programming. By and large, the vast majority of broadcasters do an excellent job in terms of their programming decisions.”
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Instant feedback in Philadelphia
War in Iraq created a hunger among radio listeners for news, talk and country music -- at least in Philadelphia, according to the Arbitron ratings service.
Although radio executives nationwide -- especially those at news and talk stations -- probably could have expected their audiences to increase, with more listeners eager for news from the front, those in Philadelphia can know for sure. That’s where Arbitron is testing a new survey system that offers daily feedback from listeners.
The Portable People Meters are pager-sized devices that detect what radio stations their wearers are listening to and when, and are touted as more accurate and timely than Arbitron’s current method of compiling ratings: listener diaries.
Philadelphia survey figures showed that during the week the war began, starting March 17, radio listenership jumped 6% over the market average.
During that span, the city’s all-news station, KYW-AM, saw its audience increase 22% from its weekly average, and the figure jumped 45% above average on March 20, the morning after the war started. Talk station WPHT-AM fared even better for the week, with 23% more listeners than usual. Country-music radio jumped even higher, with a 24% increase at WXTU-FM -- a station that banned the Dixie Chicks after their lead singer criticized President Bush, and that is playing a tune by singer Darryl Worley that implores listeners to remember the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The second week of the war, radio listenership remained high, 10% above average.
And though Arbitron’s figures showed that listeners ages 12 to 17 spent less time with media overall -- a total that included radio, broadcast and cable television -- they flocked to radio during the first week of the conflict. While the audience in that age group dropped 9% for all media, for radio alone it increased 8%, Arbitron said.