Silently Deleting Profanity From The Airwaves

from the there-goes-the-beep dept

Three years ago, a TV station in Pittsburgh got in trouble for using a technology to secretly cut out seconds from a football game in order to squeeze in extra commercials. They were using some technology that could squeeze out seconds here and there from the broadcast to compress the overall time needed to actually broadcast the game. Now, with the rise of the "crackdown" on broadcast profanity, radio stations are looking to use similar equipment to secretly block out profanity. The system lets radio broadcasters send out their signal with a regular time delay, as most stations already do. Rather than just bleeping out profanity, however, the system is designed to make it simply disappear and compress the show so that no listeners even know it's happening. Each time this happens, of course, the amount of delay decreases - so the box systematically adds back in additional seconds, sneaking in extra pauses that didn't really happen. Of course, as the article points out, most boxes are designed with a 20 second delay, which does no good if someone curses continuously for 20 seconds. Howard Stern, for instance, needs to string together a few of these boxes to make them work on his show.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    dorpus, 26 Apr 2004 @ 12:30pm

    Generalizing this technology

    Will it be possible to build more general tools to suit whatever viewer's tastes? e.g. Muslim audiences can watch American movies in which women have their faces veiled.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    AMetamorphosis, 26 Apr 2004 @ 1:04pm

    Re: Generalizing this technology


    I will only watch movies that filter out women that have veiled faces.

    I'm sure Wal-Mart will carry a model dorpus.
    If it has anything to do with screening out material for your own good, Wal-fart will carry a device suitable for such ...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Newob, 26 Apr 2004 @ 8:11pm

    filtering out filtering

    I want a filter that filters the filtering that other filters do, restoring what they filtered.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    aNonMooseCowherd, 27 Apr 2004 @ 6:53am

    Re: filtering out filtering

    The best filter is the on/off switch. Especially the "off" part.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.