Watching USA Network’s Unsolved last week, I thought I heard it but wasn’t sure. Definitely heard it (in all of its flavors) last night on FX’s showing of Straight Outta Compton. Neither show was on particularly late, maybe 10:00 PM Eastern timeframe. Didn’t stay tuned in long enough to see if FX showed nudity, but I would think a nipple or two pales in comparison to motherfucker.
Question is, when did basic cable start allowing such frequent use of f-bombs? Is it network discretion? I seem to recall hearing AMC allowed one usage of “fuck” per Breaking Bad season, and Gilligan had to chose his use wisely.
Cable channels aren’t beholden to FCC rules. The government can’t censor speech as per the 1st Amendment but “the airwaves” (over-the-air broadcast TV - ABC, CBS, FOX, etx) belong to the people and the FCC regulates content as per the wishes of the people. People don’t want swearing on their public airwaves.
Cable is private and doesn’t belong to “the people” just the private businesses that own the transmissions, so cable can and always has been looser. But the cable channels are beholden to their advertisers, so cable shows are basically “self-censoring.” If a cable channel is allowing swearing and nudity and whatever else might be censored on broadcast TV, it’s because their advertisers are cool with it, and their viewers are cool with their advertisers being cool with it.
They ran Straight Outta Compton uncensored. Nudity and all. I was glad because I hadn’t seen it, and it wouldn’t have been as good if they showed the censored version.
Turner Classic Movies shows uncensored films, including nudity, but late at night. They even showed John Waters’ Pink Flamingos uncut, which not only has the famous dog shit scene, but it has a brief fellatio scene with Divine and “her” son and the artificial insemination scene.
Missed that thread. Question answered there (advertisers okay with it.)
I remember many years ago in the early 80s maybe, my brother and I were watching something on TV at my grandparents house. Some movie on an off network basic cable channel (think Saturday afternoon pre-FOX type channel showing a-few-years-old movies with commercials). Whatever we were watching offended her so much she sat down with us and pointed out everything about the show that offended her. For about an hour or more. Thirty some odd years later, I really would have enjoyed seeing her reaction to Straight Outta Compton on FX.
Syfy is really jumping into this with both feet. Did you see Blood Drive when it was on? Holy shit. And remember, if you want to complain, call 325-400-DGAF.
Is there any evidence that this is actually true, aside from a small minority of the easily offended? My understanding is that the “vast number of complaints” the FCC gets about various things are generally thousands of copies of the same complaint. Legend says that there were fewer than two dozen unique complaints about the infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” for instance, even though thousands of identical form letters were received.
I think the current levels of broadcast network censorship is mainly a historical curiosity rather than reflecting the actual will of most people. The popularity of cable over mere broadcast would seem to back this up, although of course there are other confounding factors.
Shit’s been all over basic cable for years. Suits in particular seems to really love the word.
It was also making quite a bit of headway on network TV until Janet showing her boobie (malfunction my ass, the way that thing was “adorned” made it patently obvious it was intentional) set things way back. ER used it a few times, and it was almost as prevalent on NYPD Blue as Dennis Franz’s ass until then.