Why do video shows block the date?

I’m talking about watching shows like MaxX, American’s Funniest Home Videos (die Saget die!), and the like.

They show all sorts of crazy stuff, they show people doing stupid things…but the video tape’s date is nearly always blurred out.

Why? Of all the things to blur out, how can the date matter at all?

What’s so important about it?

-Joe

Maybe they don’t want you to know you’re watching something that was taped 12 years ago.

The date also doesn’t necessarily represent when the video was recorded: it’s simply the date set in the recording camera. I don’t doubt there’s a lot of footage out there dated Jan. 1, 2000 (or 1990, or other years) simply becuase people don’t know how (or can’t be bothered) to set there camera clocks, much as there are thousands of VCRs out there blinking “12:00”.

Sigh. “Their”, of course.

I’d guess that they didn’t want you to know you were looking at tapes from 1990 week in and week out.

Might it have anything to do with protecting identities of the people involved? Perhaps showing someone as they don’t necessarily look like now is acceptable, but if you knew what they looked like then? That’s grasping though.

Although, maybe 1990 was the high point of home camera hijinks and they just don’t want us rushing out to buy “the complete wacky home videos of 1990” because that would put them out of business.

To me, if the date is not shown, then the shows can probably be more easily packaged for syndication. You would have shows that are not “dated” and can be shown anytime in the future without looking old and dated.

As a devoted watcher of America’s Funniest Home Videos, I can report that the blurring of on-screen dates is really hit and miss. And of the dates that aren’t blurred, many are years old, sometimes over a decade old, which seems to contradict the “hiding that they’re old” theory.

Bryan Ekers’ theory above sounds plausible.

Ok, I was watching MaXxtrem or what ever it is a few nights ago and they showed a clip taken from a roof or balcony. The camera was sweeping the lovely landscape and then suddenly, it cut to a mentally challenged gentleman (their words) laying on some railroad tracks. I noticed the original landscape footage had the blurred time and date and mentioned it to my roommates (Hey, how come they…). Just as they looked up to see what I was talking about, they scene changed to the guy on the tracks…only now the time and date were not obscured! My roommates thought I was crazy.

Two thoughts occured to me. It was either the producers of the show adding some unrelated filler or…something more devious. What if the guy taking the video, who they interviewed during the show, edited it himself so as to hide that instead of helping the guy on the tracks he ran for his camera to film the gore?

As it turns out, the dude on the tracks was pulled off with literally just a few seconds to spare and my roommates have other reasons to think I’m crazy. It has been bothering me since I saw it and now this thread comes along. Very timely. Please tell me someone else saw this.

I’d like to throw in a wrench here and say I noticed this on 'American Justice" on A&E with police crime scene video.

Many video cameras allow the user to program a short name or title that will display in the same area as the date and time. My guess is that either the producers found the information inappropriate or offensive, or blurred it out to conceal personally identifiable information.

I always thought it was to protect identities of people who maybe didn’t sign a release form - if a guy gets in a police chase, for example, blurring out his face dosen’t protect him if you know it was a chase in Waco on 11/04/01. I assumed it was for privacy.

That doesn’t really fit, though.

On MaxX, for example, you frequently have these guys doing something stupid/dangerous/whatever and then, later, being interviewed about it. So we know this guy’s real name and all this…but for some reason, while showing his video his date/time stamp is fuzzed out.

I still haven’t found any theories that I find particularly convincing, so now I’ll offer a (very weak) one.

The fonts used in various cameras could be considered distinctive, and the font used could identify the maker of the camera. So, in some ways it could be like a roundabout advertisement for the camera maker.

-Joe, pointed out it was a weak theory.

I’m betting that it is because the time and date wern’t set and therfore show something really bizarre and unrelated. They are blurred out so it isn’t a distraction.

I’m with even sven – whenever I have noticed a blurred-out timestamp, I have also noticed how unobtrusive it was. Even if it shows the correct date and time, it is much list distracting from the video if it is blurred out.

Uh…