Fox denies to pay FCC's indecency fine

Reacting aggressively to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's official notice of forfeiture, News Corp.'s Fox network abruptly refused to pay a $91,000 indecency fine levied by the FCC for a 2003 broadcast featuring graphic sexual scenes at bachelor and bachelorette parties.

In a statement released Monday, Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said that they would not pay fines for broadcasting an episode of the reality show "Married by America" that featured digitally obscured nudity and whipped-cream-covered strippers, and they will instead file a petition for the FCC to reconsider the fine.

"Fox believes that the FCC's decision in this case was arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent and patently unconstitutional," Grogin said.

In 2004, the FCC initially fined 169 Fox stations $7,000 each, a total of $1.2 million, for the hour-long episode of “Married by America” that included images of contestants licking whipped cream off strippers and other scenes from bachelor and bachelorette parties.

But, recently the agency, under a relatively recent policy, reduced the number of stations to 13 and thus the fine to $91,000, saying it would fine stations only in markets where viewers complained, rather than all Fox stations that aired the program.

In its Feb. 22 ruling, the FCC wrote that the April 7 program “Married by America” on Fox network was “pandering and titillating.”

"To be sure, the pixelation of the female strippers' naked breasts and buttocks does render the material less explicit and graphic than it would have been in the absence of pixelation," the commission said at the time. "However, the material is still sufficiently graphic and explicit to support an indecency finding."

TV stations named in the FCC ruling are located in Des Moines, Iowa; Nashville, Tenn.; Detroit; Washington; Minneapolis; West Point, Miss.; Greenville, S.C.; Yakima, Wash.; Charleston W.Va.; Lansing, Mich.; Roanoke, Va.; Kansas City, Mo. and Tampa, Fla.

Responding to Fox’s refusal to pay the fines, Mary Diamond, an FCC spokeswoman, said, “We believe in enforcing indecency standards especially when children are watching.”

The Fox Broadcasting Company, usually referred to as just Fox, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., one of the world's largest media conglomerates that also owns 20th Century Fox movie and television studios; dozens of magazines and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post; satellite television networks in Europe and Asia; the MySpace social Internet site; and HarperCollins Publishers, among other assets.

News Corp. Class A shares jumped 58 cents to $18.96 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.