Mancow Muller - Mancow and The FCC

Mancow and The FCC

Muller and Emmis Communications, the company that owns radio stations on which Mancow's Morning Madhouse was broadcast, have had numerous run-ins with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for broadcasting offensive or obscene material. In particular, in 1999 David Edward Smith, the then-executive director of the Illinois-based Citizens for Community Values, began filing complaints with the FCC. While the first several of these complaints were initially dismissed by the FCC for lack of context, eventually the FCC began levying fines on Emmis – largely as a result of persistent efforts thereto from anti-obscenity commissioners Gloria Tristani and Michael Copps. By June 2002, various media sources reported that Emmis had paid $42,000 in fines for FCC violations on Muller's program.

Smith continued to file complaints about the content of Muller's show. In 2004, Muller filed a suit against Smith, claiming that Smith was violating his First Amendment rights to free speech. A federal judge declared this suit to be "frivolous and insubtantial", and as a result Muller dropped the suit on August 3, 2004. Shortly thereafter Emmis Communications announced it had reached a, "consent decree", with FCC, agreeing to pay $300,000 and to admit that the Mancow program had at times violated FCC regulations. In the meantime, Smith had petitioned FCC to deny the renewal of Emmis station licenses, including one for a station, WIBC-AM in Indianapolis, that did not broadcast Muller's program – which was unsuccessful.