Q: Why Do College Stations Hardly Ever Get In Trouble With the FCC For Cursing on the Radio?
A: “Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits,” said George Carlin. “Those are the ones that will curve your spine, grow hair on your hands.” The hubbub that followed the broadcast of that fateful sentence on WBAI in 1973 ensured that Carlin’s seven “Filthy Words” would forever be identified in the popular imagination as the seven things you can’t say on the radio.
Of course, as any radio host knows, it’s not actually that simple. The Federal Communications Commission maintains no list of banned words. Instead, it describes three general categories, each of which is regulated differently. Obscene material, such as hardcore pornography, is never allowed, while indecent and profane material can only be aired at night. This leaves it up to the broadcasters to determine, for instance, if it’s okay to play Scissor Sister’s “Tits on the Radio” during drive time, or if the word “tits” is, in the Commission’s words, “patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards,” and thereby indecent.
For a college broadcaster, these regulations can be confusing. One might assume that college students are wont to edge up to the boundaries of obscenity laws, if not only because college life, in itself, is obscene. But that has not been the reality.
Since 1970, only two college radio stations have been fined for airing indecent material, according to the FCC and a table compiled in 2005 by the Washington Post. The first of these incidents occurred in 1975 at the University of Pennsylvania, the second in 1993 at SUNY Cortland. By comparison, before Howard Stern switched over to satellite radio he was often fined more than twice a month.
So why is college radio so, um, lame?
It could be that students just aren’t getting caught. The FCC doesn’t actively monitor the airwaves, instead relying on offended listeners to report incidents. At small college stations, few listeners means fewer opportunities to be reported, and an audience made up of college students is less likely to contact the FCC about an inadvertently dropped “F-bomb.” This explains why Benjamin Michael, the General Manager of Wesleyan University’s WESU Middletown, knows of just one incident at his station involving complaints to the FCC. The story goes that about ten years ago, a vindictive and snarky young DJ mixed a beat using a message left on his answering machine by an ex-girlfriend. The ex-girlfriend, understandably upset that her most private sentiments had been made public, wrote a letter to the FCC and copied it to the University. The station fired the DJ, despite a lack of profanity. The FCC never got in touch.
The overabundance of caution exercised by WESU in this relatively innocuous situation is typical of the attitude taken by most college stations, and another important reason why college stations have such a clean record with the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau. Adam Goldstein, Attorney Advocate for the Student Press Law Center, a free speech organization for student-run media, says that Collegiate Broadcasters, Inc., the professional organization for faculty advisors at college radio stations, recommends indecency standards for college stations that are much more stringent than what the government requires. “They’re very sensitive—not just to the FCC’s requirements, but to the idea that you don’t want to offend the community,” Goldstein says. “Stations that do have faculty advisors are getting advice that, when they follow it, keeps them far within the lines.”
At WESU, station rules are stricter than FCC guidelines. While the FCC allows indecent material to be aired after 10 p.m., WESU takes a conservative position. DJs on the air after 10 p.m. are allowed to play recordings that contain expletives, but cannot say them themselves. This means, for instance, that a nighttime DJ can’t say most of the seven words in the first sentence of this article, but could spin a track in which George Carlin says them. According to Michael, this is so that the station can claim that the context of the expletives has “artistic value.” The thinking is that such an argument would protect the station from charges of obscenity, as one of the elements of the FCC’s definition of obscenity is that is has no artistic value. However, that definition of obscenity, according to the FCC’s website, is designed by the Supreme Court “to cover hard-core pornography.” This means that the chances that WESU would be accused of airing such material is very slim, and that the station is being particularly careful.
At Emerson College’s radio station, WERS 88.9 FM, on-air hosts also adhere to strict guidelines. WERS is one of the nation’s top college radio stations, with a listenership of over ten thousand. “Quite simply, our license to broadcast at 88.9 FM is worth many millions of dollars,” says General Manager Jack Casey. “We are not going to risk losing it by airing anything that could be considered obscene or indecent by the FCC. Therefore, we follow the guidelines recommended by our FCC attorney and avoid any content that does not conform to FCC guidelines.”
Students privileged enough to get their own show at the highly competitive WERS, which also uses a delay system when interviewing guests, don’t want to risk incurring fines. “I pushed the envelope intellectually, not obscenely,” says Bill Glucroft, who valued his volunteer job at the station so much that he woke up at 6 a.m. every Sunday just to be on-air—a rare feat for a college student. His show You Are Here covered public affairs issues.
For Adam Goldstein at the Student Press Law Center, the stations’ tendency to overshoot the FCC guidelines is troubling. Goldstein says that the instinct stems from a belief among some faculty advisers that since the school, and not the station, usually own the broadcast license, the school is allowed to determine what can be said on the air. Goldstein doesn’t accept this assumption. “It’s the same First Amendment, no matter where you are,” he says. “Our concern is that schools would use or have used control of the station to suppress dissenting viewpoints. When the school has a high degree of control of what’s going on in a station, it’s not about preventing indecency. They’re using it either overtly or covertly to support pro-school viewpoints.”
Thanks to a federal court case involving U2’s celebrated front man Bono, the FCC can no longer fine stations for indecent ‘spontaneous utterances’; the “F-bomb” blurted without forethought. And with just six FCC agents responding to complaints in the New England area, it is unlikely that anything short of an explosively controversial public act (think Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple) will rustle the Commission’s feathers.
With so many ways to be confused about obscenity regulations, it’s no wonder Universities are hesitant to push the boundaries. But that may soon change. At press time, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in an appeal of the the recent ‘spontaneous utterances’ decision, marking the first time the indecency question has been placed before the justices in 30 years. In the meantime, what matters is having a great lawyer. And for the record, when FCC Chairman Kevin Martin issued a statement expressing his disappointment regarding the original ‘spontaneous utterances’ decision, he used the word “fuck” four times.
