I’ve been watching ‘Cheers’ recorded from the Hallmark channel (it was one of my favorite shows), and they actually censor the word “butt”.
They just silence it or what?
Same experience. I DVR’d a bunch of Cheers episodes and it recorded off of Hallmark and it’s not isolated to just “butt.” I was amazed at anything being censored actually, considering that the show was on network television to begin with. But there were whole lines taken out sometimes.
Other instances of censorship involved the words “broad” and “ass” (I think.) But the most blatant, and disappointing, was when Cliffy was recounting a story about a film he saw involving a mistake on the part of the US president who nuked a part of Russia. So the president nukes New York City to pre-empt any attack from Russia. Cliffy first disparages the Russians (including I think using the word “commies”) and then puts down New Yorkers as loud mouth jerks (who probably deserved being nuked anyway). This part of the dialogue was all wiped out. Now, I’m from New York and I know a joke when I hear one and if anything upset me, it was only the censorship.
Maybe it’s time to buy the DVDs.
Yes, they just silence it, rather than dub in another word. But in the case of the New York/Soviet Russia slur I mentioned, the entire portion was taken out (maybe about forty seconds or so).
Axing the whole thing may not necessarily be censorship; I’ll bet they trim out that much from every episode to make room for more commercials.
To quote Jon Stewart: “Hallmark Movie Channel. For people who find Lifetime too edgy.”
The sad thing is that likely somebody out there was watching ‘Cheers’ or some other show at 2:30am on Hallmark, heard the word “butt” and was so incensed that they fired off an angry letter demanding that such vile profanities be removed. Maybe several people did.
I would like to see that letter, actually.
I was surprised to find (not sure which channel) bleeped out penis and vagina(mispronounced even) on Family Guy.
It’s part of Hallmark’s “no excuses” policy: You do it their way, no ifs, ands, or butts.
I can understand it in the aftermath of 9/11, but not for any other reason. And anyway, unless Hallmark is our government, it’s not censorship.
Of course it’s censorship. It’s just not government censorship.
On the other hand, if the stations fear being fined by the F.C.C, the it’s an indirect form of government censorship.
ETA: The FCC has no power over cable stations, so they have no excuse except being overly sensitive to loudmouth prudes.
Just looked the monthly program list. Only one movie rated TV-14, the crime drama Stone Cold. The rest are all TV-G or TV-PG.
WGN airs Cheers without any such de-butting every night from 5pm to 6pm (Eastern).
This reminds me of when I used to watch Dave’s World reruns on Pax, but then they were censoring “ass”, not “butt”. I don’t know if they do any similar censoring of shows now that they’re Ion.
I also recall ABC Family cutting out the name “Penthouse” on an Everwood rerun about little kids accidentally discovering adult materials, and completely blurring out the cartons of cigarettes in a convenience store in a 7th Heaven episode about kids trying to buy cigarettes to prove how it’s too easy for kids to buy cigarettes. Made the scene look pretty odd, just a clerk surrounded by blurs.
I just heard them censor “crap”, as in “cut the crap”.
I can see why they’d bleep out something you’d write with an asterisk, butt this is just stupid.
Yes, watch Cheers and now watch Fraiser and you will hear “crap” and “butt” silenced out, not to mention other horrble words like “puke”. And so happy that they censor them for those late night shows. After all, I don’t want my kids who are watching the 2 am showing of Cheers to hear the word butt. But, thank god that when they come home from school they can watch Little House and hear the N-word used without any problem.
I guess the whitey folks at Hallmark find that word to be just fine for the kidos to hear in the afternoon, but not for the nostaligic old folks who watch late night TV to hear the word butt.
Maybe at the next Hallmark klan meeting they can discuss their use of the N-word.
wow are you really that butthurt over it
people take these things way too seriously
It’s not a hurt, it would just be nice to see the shows in their normal run.
AND - the point was not about the words being removed as much as it was about the racial acts of Hallmark to NOT censor other racially motivative words that air during prime-time kid watching time.
Something tells me I’d rather explain to my 5 year old what a butt is (if he happened to even be up at 2 am) rather than explain what the N-Word was while he watched Little House after school.
But again, in the KlanMark world, that’s probably not an issue.
If they did take it out, they would have people complaining that they are trying to pretty up history and pretend racism never existed
So the point that censorship is a slippery slope. Cheers and Fraiser are now history too!
I’d much rather my kids go to school and say they got kicked in the butt rather than start spouting out the n-word.
Hallmark is a racist company that just wants to promote its agenda.
Yeah when they showed MASH on Hallmark, they didn’t censor out gook. They must be racist.