WASHINGTON — Signaling a more expensive era of broadcast decency ahead, congressional leaders have agreed on legislation that would dramatically increase maximum fines for radio and TV stations that violate Federal Communications Commission regulations.
The House is expected to approve a Senate bill Wednesday that includes a tenfold increase in indecency fines to a maximum of $325,000 for each violation. The bill, called the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, unanimously passed the Senate last month.
President Bush is expected to sign the legislation, ending a more than two-year quest by lawmakers and family groups for tougher indecency penalties after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" on CBS during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.
"This is a victory for children and families," Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), the sponsor of the Senate bill, said in a statement Friday.
Broadcasters have been expecting Congress to increase the penalties. But enactment of the larger fines still would have a "huge impact" on over-the-air programming, with radio and television stations having to consider putting live news and sports events on delay to avoid inadvertent incidents, said one industry executive who requested anonymity.
The larger fines also would increase the stakes in a legal battle that began in April between the broadcast TV networks and the FCC. Showing rare unity, the networks and their affiliates challenged the constitutionality of FCC rulings in March that found the use of the "F-word" and the "S-word" indecent.
"It's already caused a chilling effect," the executive said of the FCC's tougher enforcement. "It's going to be even more so, because now we're looking at numbers that are really big."
The record indecency fine was handed down in March, when 111 CBS affiliates were each fined the current maximum of $32,500 for a simulated orgy scene on the series "Without a Trace." The total penalty of $3.6 million has since been cut to $3.3 million. Under the FCC's new rules, the fines could have been as much as $36 million.
Officials with CBS Corp. and Fox Broadcasting Co. declined to comment. Executives from NBC, ABC and Clear Channel Radio could not be reached.
Douglas Gomery, a professor of media studies at the University of Maryland, said the fines still weren't large enough to deter multibillion-dollar media companies in competition for viewers with edgier cable and satellite programming.
