Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: US: That irritating beep tone on censored words...

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Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 03-01-2008, 11:41 AM:

Here in the US, we have alot of censorship on broadcast television.

Does it agrivate you when they censor a word on any given TV show, and make sure you KNOW it by adding the tone over the dead space in the audio?

Crap like Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, etc, seem to be the worst.

Would it kill the producers of this junk to just censor the word and let the soundtrack remain silent for a moment?

Just wondering.
Bruce

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 03-01-2008, 12:06 PM:

Maybe the stations want the beep noise, so at least on Jerry Springer and Maury Povitch, their viewers won't call the station and say "Your sound keeps cutting out."
Since these shows are just a step above satire anyway, maybe they should use a cow moo, a donkey bray, or some similar noise instead of that beep.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 03-01-2008, 01:14 PM:

The producers of those shows want you to know there cussing a lot. If they just left the silence, it wouldn't have the shock impact the producers are looking for.

On many more tasteful shows and many movies they do just have silence.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-01-2008, 01:17 PM:

What's amazing to me, well 2 things really: When somebody says "asshole," they'll bleep "hole" but leave "ass." Why not just bleep the whole word?

The other thing is, they often don't even bleep whole words anymore. They only bleep the vowels. Like you'll hear "Go f..k yourself" or "This sh.t really stinks." So anyone who's ever heard the words before at all will know what they are.

The Springer show and ones like it belong on cable where the bleeping would be unnecessary. I can't see how anybody can watch more than a couple of minutes of that crap.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 03-01-2008, 01:33 PM:

During the fights on Springer, I like it how they always mosaic a woman's chest out, even though you can tell from other shots that nothing was showing to begin with. They just want you to think her knockers fell out.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-01-2008, 01:38 PM:

I think it's all pretty silly. I'll make a reference to George Carlin's brilliant "seven words you can never say on TV" bit.

Everyone can easily deduce what goes in the blanks where those bleeps are placed. Bleeps of only part of a complex curse word and audible starts and ends of words like the f-bomb just make it even more obvious. As far as I'm concerned they shouldn't have even bothered bleeping or cutting the words at all. We all know exactly what the person said. Even the little kiddies watching know.

Some shows cut the curse words out to silence. I've seen some fairly slick methods of doing that where the dialog track is cut while preserving the other audio elements.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-01-2008, 01:42 PM:

George Carlin, The seven words you can never say on television.

On You Tube.

I first heard this in the '70s, at the first school that I worked at; swearing seemed to be a popular pastime among many of the girls there, and one of them brought in a copy of 'Class Clown', that this was taken from. 'Derek and Clive Live' was also a popular record at that time.

I remember when I heard the 'Seven words' sketch thinking that I'd heard all of them on British television. Then there was the famous Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols, in 1976 I think, which caused a lot of fuss in the newspapers the next day, but they didn't pull the plug on it when it went out live. However, in more recent times we seem to have become less tolerant of swearing on television over here; it seems to be more common for words to be censored now than it was then.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 03-01-2008, 02:59 PM:

I've noticed sometimes with movies that the audio is blanked out when a cure word is spoken, but the word is left in on the subtitling/ closed captioning.

Posted by Scott D. Neff (Member # 185) on 03-01-2008, 05:19 PM:

Apparently the deaf and the hard of hearing can't be offended.

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 03-01-2008, 06:02 PM:

It depends a lot on the context... an "Ass" is a donkey but when you add the "hole" it becomes something else entirely. You can say "pissed" on the radio but not "pissed on" The "beep" is added during post production editing if it was actually live they would just "dump" it. Live radio shows and tv shows are on a delay and when someone curses or sais something offensive a producer will hit a button that will just cause a "skip" in the program, some people wont even realized that anything happened. When they WANT you to know that something was said that shouldn't have been they will add the "Beep" in post production.

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 03-01-2008, 07:02 PM:

OK, so what ARE the SEVEN FORBIDDEN WORDS? There are potentially so many.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-01-2008, 07:29 PM:

quote: Stephen Furley
However, in more recent times we seem to have become less tolerant of swearing on television over here; it seems to be more common for words to be censored now than it was then.

Possibly the most infamous British TV 'bleepfest' I can remember was inspired by a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the former England football (soccer) manager Graham Taylor, who famously presided over his team's ignominious failure to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. In the aftermath, a documentary was compiled about the qualifying campaign, based mainly on unbroadcast footage taken in the dug-out during the crucial games. Taylor completely lost it during match after match, as the consequences of his poor selection and substitution decisions unfolded on the pitch: in the programme as originally broadcast, they might just as well have bought several thousand feet of 1khz tone track and dubbed it over the whole thing. In some scenes there was more bleep than dialogue! This led to a 'nanny state-ism' outcry, and a few months later there was a repeat broadcast, with Taylor's effing and blinding restored in all its infamous glory. Wish I'd taped it...

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-01-2008, 09:39 PM:

quote: Bill Enos
OK, so what ARE the SEVEN FORBIDDEN WORDS? There are potentially so many.

George Carlin's original seven words:

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

...and "tits" doesn't even belong on the list! It's such a friendly sounding word. Sounds like a nickname, you know? Hey Tits, meet Toots! Toots, Tits...Tits, Toots.

Carlin's a genius.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 03-01-2008, 10:08 PM:

I'm still laughing over his suggestion of replacing the word "Kill" with "Fuck."...

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 03-01-2008, 11:30 PM:

There are cases where innocent dialogue can be made dirty by censoring it. Suppose a woman was asked about a man and she replied "He has a really big heart." Bleep the word "heart" completely and most people's brains will supply the word "cock" or something like it in the blank, creating something raunchy out of something innocent. I saw a demonstration of bleeped words in interviews with people to create this effect, but can't remember where I saw it.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-02-2008, 12:54 AM:

"Tits also sounds like a snack. Yes. Not just any snack. I'm talking about new Nabisco Tits!"

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-02-2008, 01:11 AM:

Evans, you probably saw it on Jimmy Kimmel Live. He has something called "Unnecessary Censorship" or something like that which does exactly what you said. I've only seen his show once when a guy I worked with was one of his guests and it was on.

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 03-02-2008, 10:09 AM:

quote: Evans A Criswell
There are cases where innocent dialogue can be made dirty by censoring it.

"Opie And Anthony" a syndicated "Shock Jock" radio show from CBS Radio out of New York uses that as a bit too. It's pretty funny, and adding in those "bleeps" can really really change things!
For example take this innocent sentence;

"This big black cat jumped on me and started to lick my hand"

Now add in the "Bleeps"

"This big black [BLEEP] jumped on me and started to lick my [BLEEP]"

Now it sounds lick something tottally different!

Posted by Greg Anderson (Member # 235) on 03-02-2008, 10:27 AM:

I remember when TV was filled with professional entertainers... guys like George Carlin who could talk to Johnny Carson and, knowing they were on broadcast television, would simply clean up their language voluntarily. They knew how to save the other material for other venues. I find it annoying when people who know they're going to be censored use the foul language anyway (Jon Stewart, Joel McHale) as if they're being cute. Well, I'm not 13 years old anymore and it's not funny.

And never mind that our airwaves are filled with non-professionals these days... like people on so-called "reality TV" who don't know what they're doing to begin with... and they're drunk anyway. Besides, all of these typical foul words are just old and boring. Those tranks need to invent some new words to use with their bojo friends.

When I was working on episodic TV, I could tell that the writers were heavily influenced by the original programs they were watching on HBO and Showtime. While they were unable to do the same kind of work on broadcast TV, they still kept pushing in that direction. And it just made the shows more awkward because, as a viewer, you knew what they wanted to do but they couldn't. Bunch of losers. Why didn't they just get jobs at HBO?

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-02-2008, 12:36 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
I think it's all pretty silly. I'll make a reference to George Carlin's brilliant "seven words you can never say on TV" bit.

Bobby, I just noticed what you wrote; I didn't post the link in response to what you wrote, we must have both had the same thought at almost exactly the same moment. In the few minutes that it took me to find the copy on You Tube, and post the link to it your post came in just before mine.

When I was over there a few years ago George Carlin was appearing soon at somewhere that I visited, I think it was at the Union County Arts Center at Rahway, NJ. I wasn't going to be in the Country that day, or I might have gone to see the show. He now looks very different to he did when he recorded 'Class Clown'. I don't think I ever heard him over here since that record that I heard, almost exactly a third of a century ago now.

Despite it being so long ago, there are a couple of other bits that I remember. The first was another section of his thoughts on words; I think I can remember it almost word for word:

'Here are words that no one has ever said before:

Please saw my legs off.

Hand me that piano.

Do what you want to the girl, but leave me alone.'

The other was a piece about Muhammad Ali; I hope that at this distance in time from the events involved it's not considered too political:

'He had an unusual job; beating people up. Government wanted him to change jobs; government wanted him to kill people. He said ¨No, I'll beat 'em up, but I don't want to kill 'em¨. Government said ¨You won't kill 'em, we won't let you beat 'em up¨'

Bizarre way or looking at things.

His 'seven words' piece struck me as being genuinely funny. Of course, there never was a list of seven words, those words have been heard on television, and many others have been censored, seemingly quite randomly, and I see nothing wrong with making fun of that. Putting the very mild word 'Tits' at the end of the list makes it seem quite ridiculous. I also like the bit about the ratio of words - '399,993 to 7'.

'Derek and Clive' on the other hand struck me as being utterly un-funny. I believe that there were three 'Derek and Clive' records, but I only ever heard the first one, 'Derek and Clive Live'. It consists of a series of conversations between two characters, played by two comedians who had done much better work earlier on. It's just an endless string of four-letter words about nothing in particular. I can't quote any of it, because I simply can't remember any of it, and doubt if I could have done, even a week after I heard it.

The most famous swearing episode on British television was probably this:

You Tube again

This was the famous Sex Pistols interview, from 1976. The programme was 'Today', an early evening current affairs type magazine programme, made by Thames Television, who at that time held the Independent television clannel for the London area on Weekdays. At that time there were only three broadcast channels, two BBC and one independent. This was some time after the start of punk; the Sex Pistols had been featured on several previous programmes, but these had been pre-recorded concert footage. The newspapers had been full of stories about how vile and terrible they were, there were ridiculous stories accusing them of just about everything short of baby-eating. One thing about them however was clearly true; they tended to swear quite a lot. Given this fact, if you don't want swearing on your early evening programe, then it's probably not a good idea to include a live interview with the Sex Pistols. Why not pre record it, or at least put in a delay with a loop of tape running round a couple of Quad VTRs, as had been done previously with other 'risky' material? The presenter given the thankless task of trying to interview the Pistols was Bill Grundy, who clearly hadn't got a clue how to handle the situation, and may himself have been drinking before the show. The resulting total mayhem was, I am sure, exactly what the Sex Pistols and their manager, Malcolm Mc Laren, would have wanted. Grundy just looks totally out of place among all the punks, but basically just lets them get on with it. To be honest, there's probably not much else he could do, the whole situation was almost totally out of his control. Grundy was sacked after this episode.

I believe that one of the young women at the back was Siouxsie, who later came to fame with The Banshees.

[ 03-02-2008, 02:17 PM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 03-02-2008, 12:45 PM:

Unfortunately, I grew to dislike George Carlin in later years. The older he got, the more the "lost hippie" with the ponytail schtick grated on me - among other things.

But I used to have all of his albums back in the 70s.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 03-02-2008, 02:28 PM:

I only ever heard him that one time, on the record. I don't know what he was like when he was older.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-02-2008, 02:59 PM:

There is no doubt about Carlin's genious. Most of the '70s albums show it, with abundance. However, like Tim, I have found that his more recent stuff to be lacking in anything particularly funny (in the side-splittingly funny sense). Last night, HBO premiered a recent Carlin standup performance (actually, I think it was live)...I don't recall laughing out loud once (or "lol" in today's text speak). That was not the case in the past.

Now, Carlin definately still has his mastery of words...which was truely what he brought to the comedic field above and beyond other comedians. Even his books show it.

I'm wondering if comedy is something where you have to have that genius but also in the right time to make it work. Kinda like music...very few people or groups that were wildly popular can cointinue that for many decades (with the new music remaining popular)....there is a timing to it all. I recall seeing an interview with Pete Townsend...who wrote most everything for THE WHO where he was talking about coming to grips with the fact that it was unlikely that he would ever be able to write the kinds of stuff that made THE WHO wildly popular again (this was back before John died...so all of THE WHO were there except Keith Moon). It isn't that he couldn't write okay or good music...but the over-the-top incredible music was now in his past. You find the same sort of thing with Paul McCartney and others...

There is a certain pluse that a comedian must have to make their material funny and I'm not sure that it lasts forever...at least not at the genius level...at some point...it drifts down to merely being humerous. My top comedians remain, Carlin, Pryor and Cosby. I think a common thing with those three is that they all knew how to tell a very funny story. They also had very powerful facial expressions that somehow came through on their LPs!

Steve