Clear Channel in Deal to Settle Indecency Charges

Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nation’s biggest radio broadcaster, has reached a deal with federal regulators to pay about $1.75 million in penalties to resolve an array of indecency charges, sources said Tuesday.

The settlement would wipe away some fines already proposed by the Federal Communications Commission, as well as dozens of listener complaints that have yet to be ruled on by the agency, according to a person familiar with the matter.

This person cautioned that some details could still change, but that the framework of the agreement had been approved by the FCC commissioners in a 4-1 vote. The lone holdout was thought to be Democrat Michael J. Copps.

The deal, which could be announced as early as today, would probably rank as the biggest settlement between a broadcaster and the FCC, surpassing slightly the $1.7 million paid by Viacom Inc.’s Infinity radio unit in 1995 to resolve indecency charges against shock jock Howard Stern.

Representatives of Clear Channel and the FCC declined to comment late Tuesday.

The settlement comes as the FCC’s Republican chairman, Michael K. Powell, and Washington lawmakers have been taking a harder line against what they see as indecent material on radio and television. Their scrutiny has stepped up since Janet Jackson’s breast-baring incident at the Super Bowl.

Where the FCC was once inclined to levy a single penalty against a broadcaster for a program that violated decency standards, the agency has more recently begun to levy fines for each individual utterance that is deemed obscene. That has raised substantially the financial penalties faced by the industry.

Clear Channel had been maneuvering to stay out of the FCC’s cross-hairs.

The company in February dropped Stern’s show from the six of its 1,200 stations that carried it. Clear Channel also said it would modify contracts with its on-air performers to hold them financially liable should they rely on indecent material that resulted in fines against the company.

The new settlement comes on top of a $755,000 fine that Clear Channel already paid this year for broadcasts by a Florida disc jockey known as Bubba the Love Sponge.

In March, the FCC proposed a $247,500 fine for the company’s “Elliot in the Morning” broadcasts. The next month, it proposed a $495,000 penalty for sexually explicit remarks made by Stern in an April 2003 broadcast. The latest agreement with the agency resolves those cases.

Times staff writer Jube Shiver Jr. contributed to this report.