With the Federal Communications Commission giving Clear Channel a convenient opportunity to drop Howard Stern completely last week, a hefty $495,000 fine, the conflict over indecency on radio moves back in the direction where it has been heading all along: Howard Stern, America's most beloved dirty talker.
   Stern, unlike Clear Channel, will not back down, so the real issue now is whether Viacom chief Mel Karmazin will acquiesce in the face of a newly aggressive FCC.
   The answer, frankly, is, who knows?
   Karmazin, like his counterparts at arch-rival Clear Channel, is a political animal who fully understands that this is an election year, one in which indecency in the media has jumped to the forefront of so much debate on domestic issues.
   Political prudence would tell him to shut Stern up, gagging him until sometime in mid-November.
   But Stern is ungaggable, a loose mouth with a long history of inciting critics with volatile accusations of persecution, as he has so far in this latest conflict.
   Karmazin must also contend with FCC chairman Michael Powell,  who is hoping to redeem himself with the Bush White House after largely bungling much of the media deregulation process.
   Karmazin has long backed Stern, defending his brand of entertainment and paying FCC fines as head of Infinity, for whom Stern works.
   He has also attacked, as recently as several weeks ago, the FCC's sorry history on enforcing its indecency standards.
   But now, with the indecency debate moving back to Viacom, Karmazin must consider whether he's willing to pay fines far larger than anything faced in the past, knowing further that Stern will use the attention to intensify his offending commentary.
   In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Karmazin dismissed as largely ridiculous the furor over indecency.
   Does he see a backlash coming? No, he told the paper.
  And if one were to come, he's not all that worried. "I'm indifferent if it occurs, just for the record. If advertisers are going to shift some dollars into some other silos, that's good for Viacom because we have businesses in all those other silos."
   But that was before Thursday, when the FCC announced a $495,000 fine for Clear Channel, the second-largest fine ever levied by the FCC, for comments made on Stern's show on April 9, 2003.
   At the time, the FCC made it clear that it would begin looking at broadcasts on Infinity stations that carry Stern, some 18 of a total of 35.
   Here Karmazin could face far larger fines.
   At $27,500 per violation, and three violations per station, Infinity is facing a potential fine of $1,485,000.
   As of this morning, Infinity is still standing behind Stern. "Howard's status has not changed with Infinity," an Infinity PR person told Media Life.
   But when asked if that would change in the face of large fines, she declined to comment.
   Stern, whose rants are usually rooted in reality, has been howling for weeks that President Bush wants him off the air in the newly sensitized indecency environment post-Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast flash.
    Just last month, Karmazin wrote a letter to Congress in which he called Howard Stern “not indecent.”
   In that letter, Karmazin apologized for what Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback complained was a racist remark on Stern's show, but also said that the "spontaneity of radio programs as well as the inherent vagueness of the indecency standard [makes] compliance difficult."
   He stood by Stern during the 1990s, when he incurred so many fines, though the fires then were not nearly as hot as they are now.
   Stern responded to Clear Channel’s and the FCC’s decisions last week on his web site, writing, “It is pretty shocking that governmental interference into our rights and free speech takes place in the U.S. It's hard to reconcile this with the ‘land of the free’ and the ‘home of the brave.’"