Did the FCC abuse its discretion and violate the First Amendment by prohibiting even the occasional use of profanity?

“People have been telling me I’m on the way out every year, right? So f*** ’em,” said Cher, on a televised Billboard Music Awards ceremony. A year later, on the same program, Nicole Richie asked, “Have you ever tried to get cow s*** out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f****** simple.” The FCC, which regulates the broadcast industry, received complaints about this and other profanity on the airwaves.
The FCC declared that these words were invariably indecent, explicit, and shocking. Their utterance violated the Commission’s decency standards, and the Commission had the right to fine the networks for broadcasting them. The networks protested, arguing that the utterances were fleeting and isolated. They claimed that the Commission had traditionally permitted such sporadic usage, that this new ruling was an arbitrary change of policy, and that it violated the networks’ First Amendment free speech rights. The Commission disagreed, declaring that it had the right to prohibit even the occasional use of the words. The networks appealed to federal court.