Last night Colbert gave Amazon the finger- two of them actually. Was it really necessary to pixelate them? This is, after all, an adult show, at night, on cable tv. What kind of world are we living in 
Son, I hope that’s a rhetorical question.
Necessary? No. He’s on cable late at night, so Comedy Central doesn’t need to bleep him or do things like that. But they choose to because they don’t want to lose advertisers or viewers.
Don’t they replay the episodes the following early evening? I haven’t been watching but I thought they repeated TDS and Colbert Report at 5-6ish.
I can’t see him losing either over the finger, and I don’t think it would be a slippery slope towards saying “fuck” or doing anything else that could truly offend somebody. The pixelated finger is just erring way too far on the side of caution imho.
I agree that there’s no need for the pixelating/bleeping (they’re just words for crying out loud), but… for some reason it seems funnier when bleeped. For example the South Park movie… or Howard Stern self censoring before the move to satellite radio. Both of those seemed less funny to me with just free access to lots of cursing.
They do such a half-assed job of it, still letting you see the finger, that it has to be just another form of ironic comedy. Colbert is doing a satire of a conservative talk show, and pixilating a naughty gesture is the sort of thing a conservative talk show would do, so doing it badly is satire.
Or not.
You’re talking about gigantic entertainment companies. They are surprisingly risk averse when it comes to this kind of stuff, partly because there’s just no upside in allowing him to curse or show unpixelated middle fingers. I happen to find the bleeps and the pixels annoying, but nobody is going to stop watching the show because it’s bleeped. On the other hand people might stop watching if it weren’t.
I vote that it’s done for comedic effect. I think one of the reasons that the studio audience laughs so hard is they know the home viewers don’t get to see it.
Pixelating is funnier than not pixelating. Same goes for beeping curse words.
It’s a real son of a rich when they do that.
I agree it is done for comedic effect. Watch Jimmy Kimmel when he bleeps innocent words out of political speeches to huge laughs.
I was watching a DVRed @Midnight (the show that follows Colbert) and Chris Hardwick gave a quick double single finger salute that was unpixelated. There wasn’t any special warning for that episode like they do when they show unedited movies or roasts.
CC has been very inconsistent over the years. Sometimes pixelating, sometimes not, even for the same shows. I remember they would censor fingers on shows that aired ads for a cartoon show where the ad itself had uncensored fingers! Lately they’ve being censoring again for TDS and TCR. Ditto language. Must be to please advertisers.
Compare to the language used on shows like Louie and Fargo on FX.
Just plain stupid.