Why does E4 censor so much?

Does anyone else notice how much E4 cuts out from its programmes? Even things that are pretty tame and unoffensive seem to be cut out.

When I watch programmes like Scrubs or whatever, I just notice loads of scenes that are removed, most of the time its done really badly and results in the overall scene not making much sense.

Why the hell are they censoring absolutely everything?

Reply 1

Pepperoni

9

Fear of broadcasting anything slightly inapropriate kids before 9pm. It's stupid. Are kids really going to come home from school, switch on Scrubs and learn all about what the schools don't teach them? :rolleyes:

Reply 2

onthejubileeline

Because it's before watershed. Watch after 9, nothing is censored.

Reply 3

GodspeedGehenna

OP

3

Yeah, I understand before watershed and all, but the stuff they are censoring is SO tame, it's crazy.

Reply 4

edd360

15

Thought I would just add to this thread instead of starting my own. It is ridiculous the amount they censor. I'm a friends addict and have seen every episode a stupid amount of times so can easily tell when a word or scene has been removed. They will remove words such as "penis" and "hooker" which is just a joke. I don't think anyone would consider penis to be an offensive word :/ It just ruins it, friends was never really meant to be an adult TV show, and censoring the words just brings more attention to it as most of the time it is blatantly obvious they have removed part of the scene as it will cut mid speech to the audiences laughter. I don't watch other TV shows on E4 but according to earlier posts ITT they do it to all TV shows. It's just so ridiculous.

Reply 5

Vinchenzo96

I think its pathetic how much they censor, i mean, they cut out some suggestive use of the word "Coming" in an episode of two broke girls, at 11 o'clock at night. Most people over the age of 10 here run around swearing jaw-breakers, but they wanna cut out "coming"?! Its insane

Reply 6

DaveGrohlWannabe

To be fair E4's about as "bad" as any of the content gets on Channel 4. They moved New Girl over from C4 to E4 after the first series because the second series was approaching "adult themes". honestly. BBC's quite decent, as it's a public broadcasting service and doesn't care as much about the mainstream market appeal and pissing people off, but most commercially funded channels are apprehensive about offending it's viewers so much that they can go a little overboard.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 7

Psyk

16

They cut the best line ever from The Big Bang Theory:

"It's better to have loved and lost than to sit at home on a Friday night watching increasingly shameful pornography"

They always cut the last bit off, making it sound really weird because it's obvious they cut him off mid sentence. And then they have the laughter track even though they clearly edited out the punchline.

Reply 8

Haz23

11

I was complaining about this to my friend today. I hate it when E4 cuts off bits that are supposed to be rude, especially Scrubs and Big Bang Theory, even when they aren't even that controversial, words like 'sex' etc. The episodes barely make sense!

Reply 9

Uzume13

I know, it's so annoying. I love BBT and I don't think it's about being offensive though. For example, in one episode where Leonard sleeps with an older woman from a fundraiser party, they cut Penny calling him a 'slut bunny' but in another episode where Penny uses words like 'slut' and 'bitch', they are left in. The only reason I can think of is that it's to do with making sure they fit within the timings as the adverts cut into the 30 minute running time of each episode.
These are my findings from pondering this issue far too much!! :s-smilie:

Reply 10

Faberry

10

What I find amusing is that they cut out dialogue which contains the word "bitch", yet on c4 they seem to emphasise the word on daytime TV!

Reply 11

username33685

11

While old thread is old, I though I'd share that my favourite instance of over-zealous editing was the episode of Friends where they think Phoebe is a pornstar after seeing the film with her twin sister.... except they cut out every reference of porn and pornstar along with many other scenes, so the entire episode literally did not make sense.

Reply 12

myblueheaven339

19

Original post by rich2606

While old thread is old, I though I'd share that my favourite instance of over-zealous editing was the episode of Friends where they think Phoebe is a pornstar after seeing the film with her twin sister.... except they cut out every reference of porn and pornstar along with many other scenes, so the entire episode literally did not make sense.

Haha that's ridiculous!

This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

Reply 13

Minecraft27

14

They cut an entire 3 minute segment of an already short episode of The Big Bang Theory because it was slightly inappropriate, but not really. Leonard and Priya were stripping over Skype video chat. But they also cut lots of other stuff from that episode. So the episode ended up being about 15 minutes long, in a 30-minute slot.

Reply 14

Orbital_Rising

1

2009-2010-2012-2013-2016 on one page. tf is this

Reply 15

Vithuran1

1

I agree, they censored out the word

Why does E4 censor so much?

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