One of radio's strengths is its universality. It enjoys widespread use that cuts across demographics of race, age, gender and, perhaps most beneficial to its continuing vitality, economics. Because of that wide-reaching following and because of the impact of media consolidation on programming and broadcast content, any changes in the medium potentially affect millions of Americans.

While the Project did not conduct a content analysis of radio in the same fashion as it did with the other media sectors analyzed in this report, stories about the state of radio content were not difficult to find. More often than not, they were splashed across front pages. It was a change of pace for the medium used to sitting in the background.

We will focus this year on four of the most prominent changes in the content of radio: the FCC's renewed enforcement of broadcast decency regulations, the potential (though not yet certain) impact of satellite radio, the launch and first months of Air America, and the changing voice of NPR.

Indecency Regulations

While few realized it at the time, perhaps the biggest impact on radio content for 2004 began not on radio, but on television. The incident that brought the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" into the national lexicon, the baring of Janet Jackson's right breast during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in January, brought instant public attention to the simmering issue of broadcast decency standards.

Sitting at home watching, the Federal Communications Commission's chairman, Michael Powell, had the same shocked reaction that was taking place in living rooms across the country. The year before, Powell had earned a reputation for wanting to rid corporations of regulations, which he considered costly burdens on their market freedom and First Amendment rights. In Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, however, he discovered something the FCC for more than nearly two decades had shunned - a desire to regulate the content of the public airwaves.

The politically embattled FCC head, some skeptics charged, had also found in the incident an issue that had public support. Powell and the FCC took the public outcry as a signal that broadcasters had gone too far and it was time to rein them back in. (On September 22, 2004, the FCC reported having received 540,000 indecency complaints, a record, about the incident.) Whatever the motivation, Powell's embrace of regulations here was new.

Within days of the Super Bowl incident, the FCC responded with new "zero tolerance" indecency standards. While some of the public was rushing to the Internet for a closer look, or replaying the incident on their TiVos, broadcasters began strategizing. For the most part, though, they focused on how to avoid the risk of being fined, not on clarification of what some complain are ambiguous FCC guidelines about what constitutes "indecent" content.¹ [1]

A March 2004 article in Billboard reported that "The FCC's current guidelines consider three criteria when determining whether something is indecent: the explicitness or graphic nature of the description of sexual or excretory organs and activities, whether the material dwells on or repeats at length those descriptions and whether the material appears to pander to (sic)or is used to titillate or is presented for shock value."² [2]

Some critics have said the new focus has failed to address the real issues of on-the-air decency - the fixation with sex in media. The media critic Wayne Friedman, in MediaPost's TV Watch, noted that "a study released…by the Kaiser Family Foundation…found 67% of American parents thought the [Jackson] incident was of 'no consequence.' "³ [3] Rather than a flash of bared breast, "the same study said 60% of parents were concerned about the amount of sex their children are exposed to on TV…"⁴ [4] In other words, Friedman wrote, "parents seem more concerned with other suggestive content in primetime shows than one fleeting breast of a pop singer."⁵ [5]

In late September 2004, the FCC's five commissioners unanimously agreed to fine CBS a total of $550,000, the largest fine ever for a television broadcaster. It was based on a fine of $27,500 for each of 20 CBS-owned television stations and did not, in spite of rumors to the contrary, bring fines against some 200 CBS affiliates who also aired the show but are not owned by Viacom⁶ [6] (CBS's parent, which also owns the radio broadcaster Infinity).

On October 13, the FCC seemed to be staking out broader territory when it announced that it was imposing a $1.2 million fine on the FOX Network for content included in the reality program "Married by America." The show, broadcast during the so-called pre-10:00 p.m. "family hours," showed images of nude female dancers interacting with the male guests at a bachelor party. The network obscured any nudity with digital blocking and prefaced the episode with a standard warning that the content of the show would not be suitable for younger viewers. But the FCC, which reportedly received 159 complaints about the episode (quite a few less than the Janet Jackson incident, and even the FCC's method of counting complaints is being questioned), has said that the digitizing of the images was insufficient and the sexual actions taking place between the dancers and the men were sufficiently explicit to warrant the fine.⁷ [7]

Radio has also had its share of problems with decency. Long before Jackson and Timberlake appeared on the fifty-yard line, radio had shock jocks like "Bubba the Love Sponge," whose program reportedly once included the on-air castration of a pig. The argument could rightly be made that Jackson's half-time show appearance was simply the straw that broke the camel's back. But Jackson touched off a far more widespread public discussion of the decency question than ever before. And that very public discussion, along with very heavy fines, has had a very real effect.

Less than a month after the MTV halftime show, The Associated Press reported that Clear Channel Communications was initiating its own "zero tolerance" policy for its radio stations and subsidiaries. It said the policy would "include company-wide training and automatic suspensions for anyone the FCC alleges has violated indecency rules on the air. 'If the FCC accuses us of wrongdoing by issuing a proposed fine, we will take immediate action,' [Clear Channel President and CEO Mark] Mays said. 'We will suspend the DJ in question, and perform a swift investigation. If we or the government ultimately determine the offending broadcast is indecent, the DJ will be terminated without delay.' "⁸ [8]

The guidelines have caused some stations to re-evaluate and, at times, re-edit song lyrics. Some observers see a chilling effect that, at least occasionally, has gone too far. In one instance, an attorney told Danny Miller, co-executive producer of Fresh Air (a radio program produced at Philadelphia public radio station WHYY) that the program should not play a song by the singer Nellie McKay because it contained the word "sucks" in its lyrics. While the word was not used in a sexual fashion in the song, the attorney said, the word itself could be construed as having a sexual meaning. Fresh Air played the song but edited it so that the offending word was sung backwards-"skcus."⁹ [9]

At another NPR station, KCRW-FM, Santa Monica, the commentator Sandra Tsing Loh was fired for an incident that stemmed from an editing error. During the course of a piece about her husband's performance at a rock concert, Tsing Loh used a four-letter expletive that was to be removed or "bleeped" before broadcast. The editing never took place and Tsing Loh was fired shortly after the piece aired. She was later offered her job back but declined.

The largest radio decency uproar in 2004 came in February, when Clear Channel dropped the popular and controversial shock jock Howard Stern from six of its stations. The media organization was facing a $495,000 fine from the FCC (in July the A.P. reported that Clear Channel had reached a $1.75 million agreement with the FCC to resolve indecency complaints that included, but were not limited to, Stern).

The result hardly hurt Stern. Infinity Broadcasting added nine markets to the thirty-odd where Stern was still broadcasting (including four where Clear Channel had dropped Stern), and his ratings went up.

But Stern, who after all is called a "shock jock" because he likes to push against the establishment, didn't stop there. The radio personality came out against what he called the FCC's "witch hunt" and the ties between Clear Channel and the Bush administration. In an article on the CNN.com website, Stern was quoted as saying, "Clear Channel is very tied to the Bush administration…Clear Channel for years has been defending me…I criticize Bush and then I'm fired… They acted out of politics."¹⁰ [10] In a Los Angeles Times article, Judy Rosen noted that after the Clear Channel incident, Stern's revamped Web site looked "more like Mother Jones than Maxim."¹¹ [11]

A scan of the Web site on August 12, 2004, included, alongside a link to photos from a party in Pam Anderson's hotel room, articles about Iraq, multiple articles on George W. Bush, Ohio's value as a swing state and a link to register complaints with the FCC with a list of shows that have had indecency claims brought against them.

Stern, who has 8.5 million listeners, also has a record of political advocacy, including support of Governor George Pataki of New York and of Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and before that governor of New Jersey. It has been suggested that the "frat boys" who supposedly make up Stern's listening audience are in fact very coveted swing voters.¹² [12] (It should be noted that by December 23, 2004, Stern's homepage was back to its old mix - with galleries of 'Porn All-Stars" and Ms. Amputee 2004 and promotion of Stern's forthcoming projects eclipsing links to two FCC stories.)

Clear Channel's action against Stern's show also led to wide speculation that he and other controversial radio personalities would soon abandon the over-the-air radio system in favor of the more flexible, cable-like format of satellite radio. On August 5, 2004, XM Satellite Radio announced that the shock jocks "Opie and Anthony" would be taking their show to one of the satellite network's premium pay stations starting October 4. Opie and Anthony, some may remember, are the former WNEW-FM morning-show personalities who were pulled from the air and fired by Infinity for broadcasting graphic audio of a couple having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

By early October Stern announced that he too would move to satellite radio.

Regardless of what one thinks of Stern, his defection from the public airwaves and his publicly stated contempt for the FCC constitute something of a "shot heard round the world" for radio. The idea that one of the medium's biggest celebrities would declare the medium dead (and name the FCC its murderer) and then head to satellite affects the entire industry.

Is this what the new vigilance on the part of the FCC will mean? What is the future of traditional "terrestrial" radio in a climate that seems increasingly confusing and fiscally dangerous for broadcasters?

At this point, it's hard to know for sure.

What seems more certain entering 2005 is that the new impetus of the FCC to regulate decency will inevitably become entangled with advances in technology that are creating new radio. That is the real challenge for policy makers, particularly for whoever succeeds FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, who in January announced his resignation to pursue other paths. His embrace of morality through regulation - and by extension the FCC's - collides head on with the passion for technology that led him to be a champion of deregulation.

The question is how (and whether) government can balance moral values and concern for the public interest with a philosophy of free market and free speech.