The pre-watershed editing of movies

The Tweenies character was doing an impression of / homage to Jimmy Saville long before it was revealed (after his death) to the public that he had been a prolific paedophile for decades.

I mentioned Independent Television in Britain on the other thread but there's a bit in it about Lace, a mini-series starring Joan Collins, which ITV showed in the late eighties and they got loads of complaints about it featuring sex and violence at 8pm. LWT, who were responsible for playing it out, did an inquiry and found out that only two people in the company had actually watched it - the person who bought it, a year previously, and the head of compliance who said it needed editing but was on holiday when it was actually broadcast. Seemingly the schedulers saw the note about it needed editing but had assumed it had already been done. They tightened things up after that, though.

Sometimes stuff does get missed, though. The night in 1999 there was a bomb in a gay bar in Old Compton Street, Smack The Pony went out with a reference to blowing up someone's house. C4 did an apology after the episode saying it was "too late" to edit it out - which was surely not the case, because in those instances they would have dropped the show completely (and there was no mention of it before the episode, in a "this programme was recorded before the news..." kind of way). Seemingly they'd just completely forgotten about it. And BBC1 showed an episode of Only Fools and Horses that night with a scene in a gay bar, and had to apologise as well.

And on the day of the Omagh bomb, I remember BBC1 haphazardly snipping out the final sketch in a Harry Enfield repeat - it just cut from the previous sketch to the copyright board, missing out the end credits, so the news could start on time - but left in the "William Orangeman" sketch.

Even with movies you'd think there was a justification for showing uncut there can be issues

https://www.today.com/popculture/66-abc-affiliates-didnt-show-ryan-wbna6455962
(In the end the FCC took no action despite 50,000 complaints, arguing it was justified by the context.)

Anyone remember the day Michael Jackson died and Channel 4 hastily put up a "temporary fault" apology caption over part of a satrical show that had a sketch about him.

I’m tired right now so I may not be on the mark completely. The FCC has no guidelines when it comes to content and fines other than this handy one page write up and whether it was pre or post watershed (10PM in every time zone - so shows airing at 10pm on the coasts are safe but because they air in the central and mountain times at 9 they aren’t). Legally I believe the famed so-called 7 dirty words that are often referred to as being banned by the FCC can be used provided they are not in an obscene matter, not used in a gratuitous manner or used describe an act (such as sex or bowel movements).

Anyone else getting an unmutable audio clip about Kim Kardashian on that site?

I was in the room when that Tweenies episode went out - you can imagine the reaction!

That was a very unusual case. The problem was that the episode would've been complied many years before and at the time it would've been fine. There would've been nothing in the paperwork, billing (something like 'The Tweenies perform their favourite songs') or subtitles (he wasn't referred to by name) to raise any concerns prior to scheduling so it wouldn't have been marked 'Do not TX' in the schedulers' system. And standard practice across the board in playout is that you don't preview an entire programme outside of exceptional circumstances, you just top and tail the first and last 30 seconds of each programme (or each part on commercial channels) to make sure the in and out points are right and everything's as it should be, and in this case all the jangling of jewellery was in the middle.

The BBC are more sensitive to things related to news events than other broadcasters due to the unique spotlight they're under, but in general I think people would be surprised by just how often programmes are dropped due to news events, there'll be the very noticeable prime time ones occasionally but also quieter changes like episodes of quiz shows being swapped around because of a question about somewhere there's just been a big disaster, that sort of thing (and that's without going into all the episodes of factual shows that get regularly swapped for legal reasons). Plus commercials too - you usually won't see any airline ads in the hours after a plane crash or ads for explosive action movies after a bomb attack, that sort of thing.

There was also the episode of Benidorm with the characters singing Two Little Boys a day after Rolf Harris was convicted of indecent assault.

On Radio 2 on Christmas Day, I noticed they played Mel Smith & Kim Wilde's version of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree with the Two Little Boys line left intact, despite MTV cutting it from the music video.

There's a clip of two Yorkshire TV execs checking a film for compliance in the Day in the Life of Television documentary



(Around the 38:25 mark)

A friend of mine who worked at YTV in Leeds told me about the time they were playing out a regional programme in the mid 90s, and only realised at the end of the first half that the second part contained something which might be considered inappropriate, relating to a big news story of the day.

IIRC a local tourist had died in a crocodile attack abroad, and part two of the programme featured angry snapping crocodiles (or something along those lines).

As it was an off-peak programme with a short ad-break, no filler programme of the appropriate length could be found in time, and so the decision was made to show part one again, instead of transmitting part two, or going to a holding slide, in the hope that no-one would notice.

ABC screens quite a lot of Disney films, usually under the "Wonderful World of Disney" banner. They screened the network premier of Frozen and I think they even have the rights to the Harry Potter films which they bizarrely include under the Disney banner too.

That episode of the barely remembered "TNT Show" on 4OD for a while in its entirety. Even if Michael was alive, that sketch still wasn't worth transmitting.