Saturday September 2 1:42 a.m. EDT

Company Pays $1.7 Million in Howard Stern Case

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Infinity Broadcasting Corp. has agreed to pay more than $1.7 million to settle indecency complaints against radio shock jock Howard Stern, the Federal Communications Commission says.

The agreement resolves several pending complaints against Infinity, Stern's employer, for broadcasting allegedly indecent material on the talk show host's morning radio show. In settling the case, Infinity has neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing.

The broadcasts in question were aired between 1988 and 1994 on ``The Howard Stern Show'' on radio stations serving New York, Philadelphia and Manassas, Va.

Stern's morning broadcasts are heard by millions of people a day in cities across the country.

The FCC dismissed all pending fines and complaints against Stern's employer in return for its agreement to make a ''voluntary contribution'' of $1.715 million to the Treasury, the largest amount ever paid by a broadcast station licensee.

The FCC had initially fined Infinity nearly the same amount. ``It collects at least if not a little more than the money that was at issue,'' said Robert Ratcliffe, an attorney in the FCC's mass media bureau.

Ratcliffe said the FCC agreed to settle the case partly because more than a year-and-a-half has elapsed since it has reviewed a complaint about an Infinity broadcast that ``we believe has crossed the line and is patently offensive.''

The FCC's indecency standards are generally intended to deal with material aired during daytime hours that depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in patently offensive terms as measured by the broadcast community.

The agency investigates complaints sent to it by listeners rather than monitoring stations for indecent material.

Infinity agreed to the settlement to ``resolve the time consuming litigation that would be required'' to resolve the outstanding complaints, the FCC said.

The settlement agreement follows a recent federal appeals court ruling upholding the FCC's indecency standards.

The court ruled that indecent programming could be restricted to certain hours of the day, based on the government's compelling interest in protecting children.