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Howard Stern off the Shock Block
It's official: Howard Stern has shocked his last Clear Channel listener.
Faced with close to $500,000 in FCC fines, the broadcasting giant dropped Stern's radio show from its airwaves for good on Thursday.
"Mr. Stern's show has created a great liability for us and other broadcasters who air it," said John Hogan, president of Clear Channel Radio, in a statement. "The Congress and the FCC are even beginning to take a look at revoking station licenses. That's a risk we're just not willing to take."
Proving that they are ready and willing to play hardball, FCC commissioners recommended the maximum fine of $27,000 for each of 18 allegedly indecent remarks made during an April 2003 broadcast of the Stern show.
The conversation that fateful April day centered on the sexual proclivities of former Stern staffer Stuttering John Melendez (who has since absconded for the Tonight Show), and was punctuated by bouts of flatulence.
An offended listener in Fort Lauderdale complained to the FCC, sparking the investigation that resulted in the heavy penalties for the six Clear Channel stations that carried the show: WBGG-FM, Fort Lauderdale; WTKS-FM, Cocoa Beach, Florida; KIOZ-FM, San Diego; WNVE-FM, Honeoye Falls, New York; and WXDX-FM, Pittsburgh.
Following an unrelated inflammatory incident, Stern was suspended from those stations in February as part of Clear Channel's resolve to crack down on indecency in the wake of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.
The shock jock himself took the latest crackdown in stride.
"This is not a surprise. This is a follow-up to the McCarthy type 'witch hunt' of the administration and the activities of this group of presidential appointees in the FCC," Stern groused on his Website, www.howardstern.com.
Stern went on to say that FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell and his supporters "are expressing and imposing their opinions and rights to tell us all who and what we may listen to and watch, and how we should think about our lives. It is pretty shocking that governmental interference into our rights and free speech takes place in the U.S."
Stern and his staff are on vacation this week, so they have not yet had the opportunity to discuss his firing on the air. "Best of Stern" segments aired in lieu of live radio all week on the hundred-odd non-Clear Channel stations that still employ him.
At this time, broadcasters other than Clear Channel will continue piping Stern over the airwaves each morning. E! Entertainment Television will also continue to air the program.
However, Stern has frequently said that he feels his days at Infinity Broadcasting are numbered--particularly since Infinity is owned by Viacom, whose parent company is CBS, and as we all know, it's CBS that's taking the heat for airing the Super Bowl halftime show to begin with.
On April Fool's Day last week, Stern toyed with his listeners by pretending that his show had been pulled from the air and replaced by wholesome deejays Cross and Lopez, who promised "fun without the filth."
At the rate the FCC is going, his joke may soon become a reality.
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