Senators overwhelmingly favor indecency crackdown

Neil Roland

Tuesday, April 20, 2004 | 11:12 a.m.

The Senate next month will "overwhelmingly" pass a bill to toughen penalties against television and radio broadcasters that air indecent content, a senior Senate Republican said Monday in Las Vegas.

The House passed a similar bill earlier this year that has been endorsed by President George W. Bush.

"There's enough synergy and critical mass here that's saying let's pass something and get it to conference," said Sen. Conrad Burns, chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications. Burns, of Montana, made the remarks in an interview at the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Congress has come under public pressure to curb broadcast indecency after singer Justin Timberlake bared Janet Jackson's breast at the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this year. The biggest FCC fine ever was for $1.7 million against Infinity radio in 1995 for its Howard Stern radio show.

The Senate bill that Burns said will pass will include two provisions not in the House bill. One would require the Federal Communications Commission to consider barring violent TV shows while children are watching. The other would roll back new FCC rules that ease acquisitions of local TV stations by media companies such as Viacom Inc. and Tribune Co.

Whether the final congressional bill would include those two provisions will have to be ironed out in a conference between senior Senate and House members.

"I'm not going to prejudge what we're going to do in conference," said Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton, who heads the House Commerce Committee.

Both the Senate and House bills would increase the maximum fines for broadcasters and individual entertainers to $500,000 per violation. The current ceilings are $27,500 for broadcast companies and $11,000 for individual performers.