FCC SAID TO HAVE AUTHORITY TO ENFORCE INDECENCY RULES ON SIRIUS AND XM
The FCC is within its authority to impose indecency fines on satellite radio broadcasters, but might well have to jump over constitutional hurdles to do so, FCC Comr. Martin said in response to questions at the NAB’s State Leadership meeting in Washington.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
However, Martin declined to say whether he would support such fines. “The statute applies to all radio communications,” Martin said when asked whether indecency laws should apply to satellite radio. There are “other constitutional issues that could be raised if you want to try to apply them to satellite,” Martin said in his remarks Tues.. Satellite radio is licensed by the FCC, which could hold it accountable, he said. But he said it’s conceivable Sirius and XM could argue that because consumers pay for their services, those companies would not be obligated to limit indecency. A Sirius spokesman said his company had no comment on Martin’s remarks.
Meanwhile, Martin told the Satellite Finance 2004 conference, also in Washington Tues., that he couldn’t comment on the recent launches by Sirius and XM of weather and traffic services in major markets because he wasn’t sure how the programming was being delivered. He said the stated intent of Sirius and XM in seeking authority for terrestrial repeaters was to assure subscribers could get the satellite feed. “Their concern wasn’t inserting locally originated content,” Martin said, adding that they're prohibited from doing so under their FCC licenses. Sirius has said it doesn’t believe the FCC “is going to have an issue with what we're doing with our repeaters” (CED March 1 p12). The Sirius spokesman also said his company believes its traffic and weather reports were within the bounds authorized by the FCC for “ancillary services.”
An XM spokesman echoed his Sirius counterpart when he said “there is no controversy” on his company’s authority to launch traffic and weather services in major markets. He cited news reports quoting FCC representatives as saying XM was in compliance with Commission rules, which don’t specifically prohibit local traffic and weather services.
As for whether indecency fines can be imposed on satellite radio as for terrestrial radio, the XM spokesman said indecency regulations -- as they apply to a subscription service like satellite radio -- were “appropriately different than those for free over-the-air broadcasters,” given their spectrum for free in return for a public service obligation. Still, the spokesman said, XM takes the issue of indecency “very seriously,” and has acted “carefully and responsibly” to impose safeguards, including labeling explicit content in its channel listings and the front- panel display of the radio itself. “We also are providing subscribers with an easy means of blocking any of our channels.” The debate on indecency standards “has very little to do with satellite radio,” he said. The technology is in less than 1% of the 200 million vehicles on the road, he said. Moreover, “the vast majority of our subscribers listen in the car, and driving is by law an adult activity,” he said. “So compared with the TV experience, it’s an incredibly rare instance when a child might have the opportunity to tune into XM without adult supervision.”