BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. So, Clear Channel, the rapacious radio combine, has suddenly got religion and decided that vulgarian Howard Stern has no place on its airwaves. Huh. Now there's an opening for an equal opportunity scold.

HOWARD STERN: You're wearing a, a t-shirt with no bra, and I could tell you got real big jugs. Are those real?

WOMAN: No, they're not, actually. But they feel very real.

HOWARD STERN: You seem like a nice girl, I'll tell you that.

WOMAN: [LAUGHS] I never wear bras.

HOWARD STERN: You do not look like a porno star. [LAUGHTER] You just don't. You look like a....

BOB GARFIELD: Ha. Ha. Clearly, Stern's audience grooves on his anything goes shtick, but that's never been sufficient reason to put it on public airwaves. Hand it to Clear Channel for recognizing at last that standards of taste, decency and decorum do matter; that having a broadcast license and constitutional license to exercise free speech doesn't justify licentiousness. If Clear Channel and the rest of Stern's customers have abdicated their gatekeeper responsibility till now, well, better late than never. So, that's the good news. Here's the bad. In one stroke, one corporate arbiter has made a decision that affects not only the six stations that now carry Howard Stern, but the 1200 that might have. What an eloquent argument against media concentration. Because what if this were not the squelching of a class clown for being filthy and insulting but of a political voice for being, say, insufficiently patriotic or too liberal or too conservative? What if this were not Howard Stern but Rush Limbaugh whom we may personally despise for his demagoguery but who is a political figure of historic significance. We -- all right, I-- would love to see Limbaugh eradicated from the airwaves one fed-up station at a time. But the idea of it happening in one fell swoop makes me tremble. More troubling still is the proximity of Clear Channel's action to the FCC's sabre-rattling on the decency question. This episode has the whiff of government censorship one step removed, and even if you believe Howard Stern is the anti-Christ, that's one step too close for comfort. [MUSIC]