INFINITY 'RESPECTFULLY DECLINES' TO PAY FCC FINE

Wow...looks like a certain radio company grew some balls.

From The New York Post:

INFINITY Broadcasting is contesting FCC plans to slap the radio giant with a $357,500 fine for the infamous Sex-in-St. Pat's incident that cost WNEW bad boys Opie & Anthony their top-rated show last year.

Infinity said it "respectfully declines" to pay the fine because the contest broadcast - as opposed to the act itself - had only "oblique references and innuendo" and, thus, wasn't indecent by FCC standards.

Opie & Anthony's show was canceled - and WNEW's manager and program director were fired - when a Virginia couple participating in a station contest to see who could have sex in the most shocking public place was busted inside St. Patrick's Cathedral a year ago last August.

Earlier this month, the Virginia contestant Loretta Harper, 36, got five days of community service for "disorderly conduct."

Her partner, 38-year-old Brian Florence, died of a heart attack last September.

Last month, the FCC started proceedings to fine WNEW and the 12 other Infinity stations that carried the shock jocks' show $27,500 each - the maximum allowed - for "willfully and repeatedly broadcasting indecent material."

Outspoken FCC Commissioner Michael Copps immediately denounced the fine as a "slap on the wrist," arguing that Infinity should be stripped of its immensely-valuable radio licenses instead.