The Waterkooler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A popular New York hip-hop radio station has agreed to pay $240,000 after sponsoring "smackfest" contests in which young women took turns slapping each other for a chance to win concert tickets and cash.

In a statement, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and State Athletic Commission Chairman Ron Scott Stevens said on Monday that WQHT, an FM station owned by Emmis Communications Corp. , had also agreed to donate $60,000 to a nonprofit group that promotes awareness of domestic violence.

"This agreement should be a wake-up call to all those in the entertainment industry who think outrageousness is a clever marketing strategy," Spitzer said in a statement. "The law establishes set boundaries that cannot be crossed to protect our community's health and safety."

• Spitzer and the state Athletic Commission stated that the hip-hop and rhythm and blues station held 24 "Smackfest" contests from April 2004 to January 2005.
  
  
• Young women took turns "violently slapping" each other for concert tickets and as much as $5,000 in cash, Spitzer said. Images of the slapping then ran on the station's Web site.
  
  
• "Despite the fact that the contestants voluntarily participated in what was supposed to be harmless entertainment, it was not our finest hour," the Indianapolis-based Emmis Radio said in a prepared statement.
  
  
• In April, the station was criticized by state Comptroller Alan Hevesi for the "Tsunami Song" written by a producer and broadcast over the air. Hevesi said the parody of the Dec. 26 tsunami disaster that killed at least 126,000 people in Indonesia and 48,000 in 10 other countries in the Indian Ocean basin "cruelly mocks victims ... while shamelessly espousing racial epithets."
  
  
• "the entire Emmis family is ashamed."