The pre-watershed editing of movies

The compliance was done by "Channel TV's London Office." Ahaha.

I don't bother watching the Simpsons on Channel 4 any more. Even with the new ones, I keep wondering if bits have been cut. Half the time it turns out it's just because it's not very well written any more.

Even the late evening/past midnight showings tend to be the cut versions now.

Pretty sure last time this turned up on either Sky or Channel 4 that line was intact, though I suppose a lot depends on where they've sourced their copies from. It is however one of the better episodes of the entire series of Simpsons and I was glad it came back into regular airing.

And if you watch it on Sky One, bits have been cut out because they're cropped to 16:9.

I assume you mean old ones, in that case...

Anyway, on the subject of editing, it's a bit tangential to the thread title but one of the most impressive (to me, at the time) edits I saw was the same evening as a rail tragedy. Die Hard 2 was showing, and there's a line in there about British Rail which got cut out for that showing. When something awful happens, is someone specifically tasked with checking transcripts? Or would that film have had particular scrutiny as it involved transport?

I assume someone must actually watch the programmes particularly when it's because of something recent in the news, as some references can be very obscure and might not even be in the script.

It must be very difficult though especially when it's something that is now permanently off limits. The repeat episode of The Tweenies the BBC got criticised for where a character dressed up in a gold shell suit with over the top gold jewellery being one that you'd assume wouldn't need checking.

Mr Bean's Mind The Baby episode was due to air not long after the Jamie Bulger case, it was eventually aired a year or so later.

I presume broadcasters monitor the news just in case something in fiction has real-life similarities, it'll be almost impossible to keep track of every sentence in every programme going out that night. That's what standby programmes are for just in case. Sometimes you hear the phrase "in a change to the published episode" during an introduction to something or other.

Coronation Street a year or two ago had a dramatic storyline a year or two agao (during its week of being sandwiched between the two Britain's Got Talent shows) that was ultimately played out on the show not too far away from what had happened in reality, and the show was edited down a bit. EastEnders does this too on occasion including quick "real life" references slotted in a few hours before broadcast.



To be honest that had mitigating factors - the episode was made in 2001 IIRC and it wasn't a particularly good impression of the individual in question, in fact its target audience would probably not have had a clue of who whatever the name of the Tweenie character was was doing an impression of, so it would have gone right over the heads of the kids.

Jingle jangle
'ows about that then?

As james-2001 refers to, Sky have recently replaced all their copies of The Simpsons with the new 16:9 HD versions, so I'd have to check it again next it's shown.

I remember Die Hard with a Vengeance having a large part of the subway scene cut (the bit where the bomb derails the train and it's aftermath) when it was shown a few days after a major rail disaster.

I just checked my recent ITV2 recording - the saw goes right up to the neck of the photo of Diana, then it cuts back to Bean. Hardly seems worth it, if it's cut, since what happens next is obvious. Could've just removed her entirely. A later shot shows the "decapitated" head of the photo by itself anyway.

On US FTA TV, the edits are a bit more extreme, even later in the evening:

And

They do. Naturally the compliance / standards and practices department and playout would have seen the episodes before playout.

Scenes have been cut at the last minute in the US and there have been times when an episode is never broadcast. One such case was an episode of Hannibal (one of my favorite shows) which involved children turned killers of their own family. The episode was slated to air in April 2013 and the reasoning was because of the Sandy Hook school shooting which occurred that previous December. NBC did however put it online for viewers. The episode was filmed before the shootings & likely would never been allowed to go into production by standards and practices. I’d bet standards wouldn’t even read the script when they read the synopsis.

I believe a lot of times in the US the edits aren’t done by the networks but rather the studios when they sell them. Movies may also do seperate takes for when they will sell it to basic cable channels.

Could you explain the gold shell suit and jewelry to me?



Those two movies aired on basic cable channels. So the broadcast regulations don’t apply to them. However the channels will censor themselves as there’s the fear that ever powerful advertisers may complain.

Also it’s incredibly rare for a major English OTA Network (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox & the CW) to air movies. If they do it’s usually counter programming to a major event where the audiences will be so small such as the Super Bowl or Oscars. However that doesn’t stop individual stations from purchasing rights. The only real exception is during the Christmas season where certain movies have become annual traditions such as NBC with It’s a Wonderful Life and CBS with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. All that being said diginets (national subchannels) do air a fair amount of classic films.

The Spanish language networks (Telemundo, Univision and their secondary networks) frequently air movies. However Spanish language viewers are a lot more accepting of certain things such as outfits or racy attire. I imagine they censor the language and sex scenes are cut to comply with FCC regulations.

FTA is extremely rare - we don’t have any type of FreeSat or FreeView channels and probably 99% are encrypted when they are distributed to the satellite / cable companies.