My mom was (actually she still is) Catholic, but she didn’t want her young sons poking each other’s eyes out.
The Benny Hill Show
I discovered it late at night on PBS in my pre-teens and thought it was the greatest thing. Mom apparently disagreed. I guess she thought all those random stray clevage finding maraschino cherries and the flatulent beach balls would warp me.
… she might have been right just a little bit.
We weren’t allowed to watch anything until 5:00 PM. I think my mother preferred us to be outside and active rather than glued to the set. (This was in the early '60s)
I still feel a tingle of guilt having the TV on any earlier than that.
Other than things that were past my bedtime, or which I couldn’t watch because my brothers overruled me, I could watch whatever I wanted. Of course, we only got three channels back then (10, once we got cable).
As a kid my mom wouldn’t let me watch “Love Connection”. (80’s) Watching it later, I totally understood.
No restrictions at all on what we could watch. I did have a bedtime though, and getting special permission to stay up late to watch something was a great occasion. I still remember being allowed to watch the miniseries “Eleanor and Franklin” and David Hartman in “Lucas Tanner”.
Reading some people’s comments about four-letter words, I was thinking “what four-letter words?” When I was a kid, T.V. (even “Three’s Company” and “Soap”) was definitely G-rated.
My mom had a simple system: Until we were well into school, we didn’t even know of the existence of anything other than PBS, thereby avoiding the problem entirely (most non-kid shows on PBS, we would decide on our own initiative were boring). When there was a classic movie on like The Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz, we watched that, too, but Mom handled the TV then, so we didn’t know that she was doing anything different with it.
When we got older, the only content restrictions were on live-action violence (Looney Toons was fine). The only exception she made to that one (after she saw an episode herself) was MacGyver, because she judged that the intelligence outweighed the violence.
I don’t recall my sister or I ever wanting to watch anything particularly sexual, so I don’t know what her response would have been to that.
First season of “The Dukes of Hazzard”. Mom didn’t mind as much after it was made more kid-friendly and our big color TV got moved downstairs, where she didn’t have to hear it.
I got to watch Benny Hill with Dad. 
Jeez! I wasn’t ‘forbidden’ to watch anything! When my bedtime rolled around, I had to go to bed, but not because of anything racy on TV. (I was also allowed to read anything I wanted, too.)
No censorship of film, TV or books.
Well, no Playboy Magazine.
And bed by 9PM.
Oh, I just thought of another one! I was absolutely forbidden to watch the Match Game and several shows of a similar type like Hollywood Squares. Gene Rayburn was a leering old satyr and Paul Lynde was a well known poofter.
The only non-bedtime related censorship I remember was the broadcast premiere of The Graduate. I got sent to bed early. “But it’s Friday, I always stay up late on Friday!” Nope - go - to- bed. Otherwise, nothing that I noticed. Benny Hill, Monty Python’s dirty vicar sketch, Hammer horror films were all ok. It may be they did exercise control, but with one TV in the house, maybe I just never noticed.
Same with my kids. The only time I made them turn something off was when they were 5 & 3 and starting flailing around out of control after about 3 minutes of Power Rangers. I was more worried about them getting hurt and needing to calm them down then any objectionable content. Now, I don’t forbid anything (it’s pointless when you consider that stuff on YouTube is way more offensive than anything on basic cable) but I will belittle stuff I don’t appove of. (YouTube poop - (sarcastic voice - “Gee how clever. Dubbing swear words into cartoons for 10 minutes. (normal voice) That’s it?? That’s the only joke they can come up with? Cussing alone isn’t funny unless you’re dumb. At least be clever about it”)
I wasn’t prohibited from watching anything. The only restriction I had was a rather draconian bedtime on school nights (I had to go to bed at 10:00 on school nights even when I was in early high school, which pissed me off because one of my favorite shows at the time was Vega$, which came on at 10. I think my mom and I worked out a compromise on that one). But as far as content went? Nothing. I had a TV in my room from the time I was fairly young, and they never paid any attention to what was on it as long as I wasn’t staying up late.
We couldn’t watch “Three’s Company,” “Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island,” or (strangely) “Newhart.”
And I think my father REALLY wanted to ban “The Facts of Life” based on the title, but he relented.
Someone else who’s heard of Marlo! Now I have the theme running through my mind.
Me, too! My mother thought he was a dirty old man (okay…he was!) and wouldn’t let us watch it at all. Which, of course, meant that we sneaked peeks whenever we got the chance. The surest way to make something irresistible is to forbid it.
The news would start at 6:30 when I was growing up and that’s when the television was allowed to be turned on. The only time I have the TV on now during the day is if it’s a rainy Sunday.
I didn’t let my kid watch shows like Family Guy or South Park when he was younger. Not because he’d hear “swear words” but because he was a young kid with no filter and no understanding that something amusing in context on South Park might not be as well received if he started spouting off some Cartman-esque tirade about “the fucking Jews” in grade school, thinking it’d be hilarious.
Sure, he might have heard it from somewhere else but why facilitate it?
My mother didn’t let me watch Married…with Children because she hated the way they treated women on the show. It was only until I was about 12 or 13, and she was really only half-hearted about it.
My sister on the other hand was forbidden to watch Beavis and Butthead. If my mother wasn’t around, I’d let Baby Sis watch it with me. (She was about maybe six or seven when it started)
The talk of Mr. Rogers being creepy reminds me that my mother banned Pee Wee’s Playhouse because she thought Pee Wee was creepy. I guess she was right about that one.