NAB’s Smith Needs To Rethink Indecency

NAB President-in-waiting Gordon Smith won points with several trade reporters at the NAB Radio Show Wednesday and showed that he is an old pro by telling them they were at liberty to report his comments. NAB PR chief Dennis Wharton had organized the meeting as an introductory, off-the-record affair.

Smith comes off as confident, thoughtful and sincere. While he doesn’t throw off the energy that his processor David Rehr did, he has the same likeability and far more polish. Smith is someone who will be listened to.

Sitting around a circular banquet table, we learned a bit more the man’s background. For instance, even though he was born in Oregon and represented the state in the Senate for 12 years, he was actually raised in the Washington suburbs after his father went to work in the Eisenhower administration and later became president of the National Canners Association. “I grew up in a trade association family.”

Smith also made a good case for his being, as advertised, a bi-partisan kind of guy. It’s a touchy point. Many had expected the NAB to hire a Democrat since that party is much in vogue in Washington these days. In introducing Smith, NAB Joint Board Chairman Steve Newberry said the NAB can’t be switching presidents every time the majority shifts in Congress.

I came away troubled by just one thing: his answer to another reporter’s question about his vote in favor of increasing by 10-fold the FCC fine for broadcast indecency.

Smith made no apology for the vote. “I was joined by 99 other senators. When you wear the hat of an elected representative, you have a responsibility to reflect those local community standards.”

“My job now is to help broadcasters who do not favor indecency, who do not promote indecency, to deal with the legal ramification of local community standards,” he added.

“I will help [broadcasters] with that issue because they don’t want to be tagged with promoting indecency. That’s not what they are in business for. I will help them to get a message out that they respect those standards too.”

Hold on there.

I don’t think that many broadcasters “respect” the indecency standards, which reminds them they have fewer First Amendment protections than other media and that expose them to arbitrary fines, now so large they could destroy some stations thanks to Smith and his former Senate peers.

Now it is true, for fear of being “tagged with promoting indecency,” NAB has sometimes been reluctant to challenge indecency rules. The political price is too high. But it was always understood that the NAB didn’t like or respect the rules.

Smith’s comments, I think, betray a certain timidity on the issue that goes beyond political expedience. He offered no criticism of the rules or suggestion that they may be constitutionally suspect. Maybe he thinks they are a good idea. He certainly did when he went along with putting more bite in them.

When Smith gets around to signing his lucrative three-year contract, he should be aware that he will not only be representing the station owners and corporate managers on the NAB board, who are uneasy with taking on indecency, but also the thousands of men and women in broadcast TV newsrooms and thousands more behind radio mikes who consider the indecency rules as an affront to their rights as Americans.

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After nearly two weeks on the air, it’s becoming clear that Jay Leno will not revolutionize network television or restore NBC to its primetime glory days. After a strong start, the numbers have sagged as the other networks begin rolling out their new programming in the time slot. Leno now appears to have a mortal lock on third place at 10.

Leno and company let me down. Instead of experimenting with something new, they opted for the familiar, a reconstituted Tonight Show with the same bits and same tired comic sensibility. And comedy without a little anger behind it leaves me cold. Leno may be the happiest man in America.

But let’s give NBC credit for doing what it can to deliver whatever viewership Leno does attract to the local affiliates for their 11 o’clock newscasts. They get 15 seconds in the last commercial pod and the last thing Jay says each night is the “local news starts right now.” And it does. No credits. No commercial interruption. “It’s all as promised,” NBC affiliate chair Mike Fiorile says.

Unfortunately, NBC gives with one hand takes with the other. In the handful of shows I’ve watched, the 15-second local news insert is followed immediately by a 10-second spot for an alternative way to watch the show.

“Normally, Jay’s only on at 10/9 central,” the promo says. “But he’s perfectly willing to be funny on demand. Full episodes of The Jay Leno Show, free anytime, at NBC.com.”

That’s what the announcer says. Here is what I hear: “Hey, don’t bother staying up late for this telecast on [YOUR CALL LETTERS HERE] or the news that follow. Watch it at work on your desktop when your boss isn’t hanging around.”

I noticed last night that NBC did the same thing on one of its pre-Leno sitcoms. “Watch full episodes of Parks and Recreation for free. No property tax. No sales tax. It’s free as in free. Parks and Recreation at NBC.com.”

Imagine that, my dear NBC affiliates, free TV. What a concept.

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My favorite call letters are WVOX. Vox is Latin for voice and since the fall of Rome heard most often in the phrase vox populi. The calls belong to a regional AM station in New Rochelle, N.Y. (take Exit 16 off I-95 and look for the tower) that truly is the voice of the people for that community north of Manhattan and much of the rest of Westchester County. And it’s just one of ways that owner Bill O’Shaughnessy manages to spin his incredibly wide web of politicians, business leaders, artists, media types, clerics and just plain folk in the New York suburb. 

Last week, I visited the station as it was celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the station adopting those call letters. I expected to congratulate Bill, whom I’ve know for at least 20 years through his activity on the NAB board and First Amendment issues; schmooze a little with his other guests and be on my way. But I found myself hustled into one of the studios where Bill was in the middle of a five-hour broadcast with a stream of the station’s fans and talk show hosts.

Bill is a big advocate of the First Amendment rights for broadcasting and among the last station owners to protect himself with a delay on his broadcasts. So, we chatted briefly about the fairness doctrine, indecency and restrictions on campaign spending.

It was much too heavy for what was mostly Bill accepting and dishing out rich compliments and leading guests through stories of the good times. Other on-air guests included former Governor Mario Cuomo and fellow broadcasters and Westchester resident Phil Lombardo, whom Bill has joined in raising money for the Broadcasters Foundation of America.

The New York Daily News once called WVOX a “glorious hodgepodge” of news, talks, sports and religion. And that it is. Some hosts have a slot on the station simply because Bill thinks it’s a good idea. “We put them on for nothing,” he says. “Big, rich guys who want to play radio, we make ‘em pay.”

To give you some idea of this hodgepodge, my five minutes on the air followed Rabbi Amiel Wohl, who hosts a show with Judge Sam Fredman, and Mike Scully, an actor who is honing his skills as a conservative talker on the station.

Here’s what I told Bill when I was on the air: For the past 90 years, the federal government has been trying to come up with a magic regulatory formula that would turn each broadcast station into an electronic town hall, where locals could keep abreast of what’s going on, hear the various sides of controversial issues and, if they wanted, go on the air and get in on the action.

The government has yet to find that formula. It never will. Such stations depend on benevolent, local owners like Bill who have a deep interest in their community and seek the diversity of ideas and cultures within them. You simply can’t mandate owners like Bill.

And let’s get this straight. The voice of Westchester is not Bill O’Shaughnessy. It’s the many people who pass through the wide open doors of WVOX.