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Hogan in the not so hot seat

It was the considered opinion of Radio Business Report that the seat occupied by Clear Channel Radio President/CEO John Hogan would be hot enough to provide indoor heating for all of Capitol Hill on this brisk February morning. We were wrong.

It seems that the proactive steps taken by Clear Channel, particularly its new Responsible Broadcasting Initiative, its axing of Bubba the Love Sponge and its suspension of Howard Stern, siphoned off a lot of potential heat before he even sat down in front of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

It helped that he also seemed sincerely contrite. He said he couldn't say he was happy to appear before the subcommittee. "Today, more than anything else, I'm embarrassed. I've read the transcript of a Clear Channel radio show featuring the personality known as Bubba the Love Sponge...As a broadcaster, as a CEO, and as a parent of a nine-year-old girl, I am ashamed to be in any way associated with those words. They are tasteless, they are vulgar, and they should not, do not - - and will not - - represent what Clear Channel is about."

Hogan benefited, in our opinion, from the presence of five television execs - - they drew away a lot of fire. However, almost all of the Reps who did fire a query or challenge Hogan's way softened the blow by first praising Clear Channel's recent actions.

Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) asked why Clear Channel's seeing the light didn't happen earlier? Hogan simply answered, "We are going in a different direction," and was not called upon to get into any details from the recent, nor the distant past.

The closest questioning came from Charles Pickering (R-MS), who asked if Clear Channel was going to pay its recently assessed $755K Bubba fine ($40K of which was for public file problems). Hogan said he could not answer that question.

He previously told Upton that the company had until 3/4/04 to decide how to handle the fine. The problem it faces is whether paying the fine would then put its licenses in jeopardy.

Pickering said CC should prove it's turned over a new leaf by admitting its prior guilt, paying the fine, and moving on as you would a speeding ticket. Hogan countered that the penalty should be proportional to the crime, and he wouldn't want capital punishment for a speeding ticket, and a license revocation is capital punishment to a broadcaster.