As much as I like reality television and trashy daytime talk shows, one thing that I cannot stand is when they bleep out the bad words every 5-8 seconds. The conversations can be very difficult to listen to, if not completely annoying, when people are arguing or talking at the same time because it is steadily being interrupted by the bleep tone.

Being that most TV sets are equipped with SAP (secondary audio programming) I suggest that they continue to run the bleeped audio on the main audio signal but for those of us who don't mind hearing profanity should have the option of switching their TV into SAP mode in order to hear it raw and uncut.
-- Jscotty, May 26 2009

Nothing wrong with a little bleeping http://www.youtube....?v=uEHEd-2geas&NR=1
[zeno, May 26 2009]

I'd like to see them continue the bleep, but - instead of just glossing over the fact, there should be full-screen sized captioning that clearly identifies which word has just been used - So for example, if someone drops the f-bomb during an interview, the customary bleep should continue to be transmitted* and the word "FUCK" super-imposed on screen in large friendly letters.

* to be fair, there's not really that much bleeping here in the UK these days (either that, or I'm watching the wrong kind of programs)
-- zen_tom, May 26 2009


Nowadays, instead of bleeps they use the even more annoying silences.
-- Veho, May 26 2009


[zen_tom] I think the relative lack of swearing on UK TV is due to a corresponding lack of those programmes where inarticulate people are encouraged to argue with each other. However "police action", and other reality TV, programmes still ensure that there is work for the bleeper on these moist and fertile lands.
-- Aristotle, May 26 2009


Wouldn't it be possible to automatically construct a voice pattern from the previous utterances, and then superimpose a 'darn' or some other PC swearword in the speakers voice? fails on people who begin their performance with a 'fuck', but most shows aren't live anyway.
-- loonquawl, May 26 2009


those bleeps enable viewers to watch TV with their kids within earshot.... so I suppose it *is* a good idea to not censor things: force parents to make a choice; those programs are just crap anyways.
-- FlyingToaster, May 26 2009


Can you really not tell what they are saying? They're generally saying 'fuck' or some variant thereof. They rarely come up with anything interesting like 'donkey botherer'.
-- Bad Jim, May 26 2009


//The bleep on a lot of those talk shows is programmed in by the cameraman// Actually it is done by the audio engineer in post editing. It would be relatively easy to make an additional audio track without the bleeps. What they are saying is obvious 99% of the time. Even young children often know what was being said because they hear it 100 times a day at school. So why even have the bleeps in the first place?
-- Jscotty, May 27 2009


With a little more equipment, you could bake this without using the SAP audio track: Instead of a simple bleep, encode the information from the original audio into a bleep-like sound. I'm sure the two parties can agree on a happy medium between bleep consistency and swear word fidelity.

Then sell a box called The Unbleeper (tm) which takes just the audio track as input, notices encoded bleeps, and converts each to the original swear word, with somewhat-reduced fidelity.
-- joee, Sep 25 2009


This reminds me of a sketch by Tim Minchin (Aussie Comedian).
Can't remember how it went, but the punchline was 'Finger my M*m'!
-- MikeOliver, Sep 25 2009



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