There's a particular one-kilohertz tone that is universally understood to be covering up inappropriate words on radio and TV. But there are other options, too, like silence -- so why did this particular *bleep* sound become ubiquitous?
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Is ninety nine percent invisible, I'm roman mars before Chris broom became a
Jordan and I'm the producer he had a college radio show in toronto, where he interviewed bands coming through town. I remembered this one time when I got the call to sit down with me,
store, metal, legends
you probably know voir redress aliens their loud they're, not my thing
they're fine. So I go into the interview. My tape recorder in hand and the dude in war cannot stop swearing, even though I repeatedly asked them to stop the tape of this interview has been lost to history, but it sounded something like this. A war has it? Oh, please, stop them. Ok,
I like it was not my finest moment is a journalist leave. You went out on the air and right after Chris was called into the station managers office. He was
I in no uncertain terms. The interview had too many swear words, but it didn't have swearing. It just had leaps, but people were concerned about thus swearing because to lots of people
there, isn't much of a difference. The sound is synonymous with bad words.
day. The one kill her tongue is universally.
Understood to be coming up. Inappropriate words on radio and tv going don't try to find
didn't know you probably here the bleak button, all the time and reality shows like the bachelor, nay, I didn't tell me or document restyle comedies,
I was born, swans, oh and, of course, on vps children's television show arthur. You can forget about going to the concert tonight why you can't do that
tat and I have like the member list of grammy nominated thrash middle band war. The approach to censoring content on public airwaves is constantly evolving right now. The bleep is often used to censor bad words, especially on tv, but there are other options like silence just making. It seem like the swear, never happened. So how did we end up with the bleep
You know it's actually a pretty interesting story in the nineteen twenties in america, radio was the hot using after years of newspapers and the telegraph
even the smallest local radio station, could broadcast voices into hundreds or even thousands of homes.
You know they had absolutely no idea what they were doing her ear bestows is a writer and editor popular in other.
Early days of the internet, where people were having blood rebel
read any blog. They would read anything it was like my day.
at the dry cleaner. You know when people will say. Oh, my god, this is fascinating. Maria says one hundred years ago there weren't big national broadcasters and local stations, had to figure out how to fill all that time, so they would put pretty
anything on the air. If you had a song you want to play, or as they want to read, you could probably just walk
your local radio station, and you had a fairly good shot of getting on here. Of course, this created ton of opportunities for things to go wrong. Maria points to this one notorious incident from nineteen twenty one when he performer named olga patrol, VA, went on the radio and read an innocent seeming nursery rhyme, which was secretly politically incendiary. Ok,
moreover, was this famous vaudeville actress and she went on this radio show in newark older, drove up
I'm just entertainer. She was also an advocate for birth control patrol it was cool,
friends, with Margaret singer, who founded the american birth control league before the radio people could do anything she started reading her poem. She
at this nursery rhyme. That was like there was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, because she didn't know what to do it's kind of a blink and you missed it. The thing what to do in the rhyme was birth control. I know it sounds incredibly tame in two thousand. Twenty two
but a hundred years ago, olga patroclus satirical dirt rhyme was probably against the law that was terrifying to people and the eighteen. Seventy three comstock lies at that point which had banned the distribution,
so called obscene materials, including information about contraception, which is deemed obscene or enforce so their people,
When the radio station are like on my god, they're going to take our licence, they got off the air and working for the station. The authorities didn't notice, but the men working the board were rigged out and with good reason. At that point, it wasn't clear what content was allowed and what could get your license for vote after incidents like the one with the troll via radio operators realised through needed to have a back in case somebody like a feminist or worse. A communist got on the air
and that's why they invented leaping or sort of bleeping that original bleep began.
As a music that cut in suddenly to broadcast that might be sort of problem.
They had another operator, the entire time playing classical music and if anything,.
came up that they didn't wanna hear there would be a signal to this engineer
I don't need be hearing classical music that second, that was like the original version of bleeding. The classical music solution was widely adopted by radio stations across the united states. Shortly after the patrol the incident, in fact, ogre petroleum ran into the censorship regime in nineteen twenty four when she read from one of her plays on a different station this time when she hit the potentially offensive material it didn't get on air. There was an old woman who lived in issue.
She had so many children by the nineteen fifties. Radio had gone fully professional with big national broadcasters reaching everyone in america and it was joined by a dynamic ups.
A flash in the pan invention, called television heard of it. By this point, radio and tv were regulated by the federal communications commission, who had the power to do out fines and even revoke licences for any content. They found indecent and it was into this brave new world.
that's the bleak button was born. The first bleep was created, so radio stations could cover ups where words, just in the nick of time, most live. Radio isn't actually MA
it sent to the airwaves seven seconds after it happens in real life. This gives broadcasters seven seconds to catch, swear word and covered up with a way
sound before it reaches your ears. You got
producer with his finger on the button and the button disconnects the brain
estonia and covers the are you I could probably do that there. If I were only too that's richard factor,
he was a board operator at w abc in new york in the nineteen sixties, back in the james, like like biggest radio station in the country, possibly in the world, richard says the reason the was an obvious choice is because radio stations use something called an an oscillator. An oscillator is
lt into most mixing boards, and it sends out tests tones like a hundred hurts or five hundred words or one killer. Hartstein
it creates. A tom is like a synthesizer
if you, if you have a synthesizer, it's nothing, but an orgy of us later that big shelter and make different answer since the oscillated was already built in richard says, using the bleep tone to cover up a swear word well, it's just me
since it there's nothing special about it. Just covered up the union,
What are you because the alternative was just a long stretch of nothing,
and silence on the radio is a total, no go something if you don't want the earth for seven. Second,
somebody drones in another stage, while the bleep Tom was kicking around in the fifties, it became ubiquitous much later. Thanks in part to a fateful supreme court case in nineteen
Seventy three, the radio station w b a I decided to test the waters and see if america was ready for uncensored content. Bayard, a lot
clip from a comedy routine by George Carlin called the seven words you can never say on television
those wondering. The words are, in course,
routine was uncensored and it had a ton, of course words. So the f ccs and a warning to the stations parent company pacifica. The whole thing became a first amendment case at the supreme court, and the court ruled that actually, no, you cannot air all those where words, and yet the ep cc did have the right to decide what was and was not appropriate for the airwaves. The ruling embolden the of susie, who gave a bigger and bigger fines by two thousand six congress, passed a law instructing the
c c to issue fines of three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for broadcasting swear words on radio and tv, with all of that, going on the bleep sensor became more and more popular people wanted edgier content, stuffed it felt more like real life and at the same time the f c c was going fine crazy. So the bleep was a perfect solution in part because the bleep doesn't just a race, a bad word
It also draws attention to it. The bleep, I think, is good in so far as it announces we messing with what it is that we show you. Robert Thompson is a professor of media history, circus university. What you are about to see is not happening the way it actually happened. It's been changed and we ve got this obvious. Beep didn't want you of that, and beliefs throughout our life are generally warnings. If aid garbage struck is backing up toward you. You hear the beliefs to up to warn you before a weather advisory comes up on your television set me here. Those annoying beat the bleep sound became popular in part because it is of noxious. It feels kind of illicit
even while it is technically covering up the swear word the bleep, in my opinion, actual we emphasise as it under lines. It foregrounds it by the early two thousands the bleep was everywhere. The jury springer show me,
It's a mainstay of daytime tv while reality shows like the bachelor made it a staple in prime time, and tv censors became more loosey goosey in how they use the bleep. If you listen to a bleep, a a smart leaper can often get the bleep begin after the first consonant of the word and end before the last consonant of the word. Everybody knows what they're saying
lip reading will usually do it in itself. The advocacy group, the parents, television, a media council to a study in the early two thousands and found that bleeding increased by please don't laugh, sixty nine,
that during a five year period. Reality
he was a big driver of this increase in beliefs, but there's
another reason it really took off in the early two thousands, it's the rise of what
with steals calls the comedic meadow bleep them
it's. What a comedy show uses the bleep not to cover up the swear were, but as a punch line in and of itself. It's like this strange signal
The very every viewer of lake we're gonna break into you
effective dream now and introduced the concept of naughtiness or indecency. A bleep is like a rim shot after a joke. If you didn't hear that bad word, we believed it. So you could be sure that you knew where it was. The idea of the comedy bleep is actually pretty old comedian. Jack Paar did a version of the joke in the nineteen sixties, replacing words in famous advert
Judgments with a cook who clock sound mother, please I'd rather myself what wrong Helen, maybe at europe
the toothpaste for people who can't always be in the early two thousands. It became the standard type of joke where the bleep button is used so much. It sounds absurd. My favorite example of this was the osborne starting in what was it two thousand two way funnier to watch that show
as it is with the beliefs, then to play it on dvd or finding it on streaming. Without the sleep said almost a morse code, telegraphic kind of rhythm and
music to it, I'm sick of profanity as poetry, courtesy of
of the bleak ever is destroying manual when it may
but once the raiders were arrested development, there's an arrested development episode, where their bleed being all the way through the sea,
and nobody can tell exactly what they were saying on friday
she'll be my dusting.
Day day slowpoke you might be, but it's
Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that and the show's creator Mitch Hurwitz says his actors weren't actually swearing during these sequences. They would say the words lip flap. So if somebody read their lips, they wouldn't be able to tell what swear word it was supposed to be or what
splain. The jokes appealed to mp are. That was the point at which we realized. You know it's more fun to not know exactly what it is that were saying. It becomes kind of a puzzle for people
think it's about. You know letting your imagination do the work, the apathy.
Of this trend is a recurring sketch.
jimmy make late a show night called unnecessary censorship, or he replaces parts
perfectly normal senses with long
not just weeks president obama delivered his final state of the union address and urge the americans to build a quote big nation. We
space programme almost overnight and twelve years later we were on the moon.
In so many ways. The sensor bleep noise is like a super swear. It can be used
barely conceal. A swear word like on jerry springer or it can be used to let our minds run wild and consider all sorts of possibilities like arrested development as a tool of censorship. It's not that effective, which is why certain political action groups would like to see it dead. Hello, TIM Jim me,
this team winter is the head of the parents, television and media council. We are a grass roots, nonprofit nonpartisan organization. Our mission is to protect children from the graphic sex violence and prevent
It seems so pervasive on our internet in our entertainment media. Today the ptc is famous for having monitors, watch, broadcast tv and submit complaints to the federal communications commission. They also do things like lobbying congress to increase the fines against broadcasters who put swearing on the air. The ptc believes tv and radio should be a family friendly haven where content is appropriate for everyone and for TIM, that conviction has created a complicated relationship with bleeping, first and foremost when it comes to a bleep button, vs hearing the profanity, especially on entertainment content that is likely to be consumed by children. Now the bleep button is better than the profanity. Usually, generally speaking, in our opinion, and it's it's one of those things where we don't want to. Let perfect
the enemy is good, but still he thinks the bleak button. Isn't some neutral thing in tim's mind the bleak button is kind of like cheating. If the intention is to shock the ship was allowed believe in there and that's exactly what they're doing to doing it. For us
This is no honest efforts to to make sure that the programme it doesn't violet indecency standards,
is a way to almost do the opposite, you're you're, doing it intentionally to suggest and to provoke you're almost adding it back in and adding emphasis to it. Even though you're not saying the words in two thousand and ten, the ptc launched a boycott against a sitcom based on a twitter account called my dad says. The twitter thread used a profanity in the title, but the show didn't
and then the trailers they actually just used. The word bleep my dad says,
is this hall only CBS, they called sponsors of fleet. My dad says and told them to boycott the shout. It was cancelled after a few episodes, mostly because nobody was really watching.
The bleep one might be on its way out, but not for the protect the joke.
Reasons favoured by tim winter, and the pity is because
across society has become more and more accepted. A reuters pull found that only fourteen,
and of americans, never swear
in day to day life recently, the fcc has lost some of it's regulatory power in two thousand and ten. The second circuit court of appeals struck down. The fcc is right to levy fines for fleeting swear words in live broadcast, saying they're wrong,
were quote unconstitutionally vague in the years since that ruling tv and radio hasn't been a vulgarity free for all advertisers, and parents probably wouldn't abide that, but the standards are definitely changing. Most stations, don't bleep words like bitch or ass, any more. It's possible we're heading towards a world where and won't be out. But personally I hope we keep the bleep the bleep button is. America's super ego is the desire to say exactly what we want all the time and the knowledge that we,
and when we come back to the delicate art of censoring swear words during live broadcasts, I'm ready to press the big red button cause at this point, I'm like off discourse over the air stations can get find. My whole career is over more with Chris Brubeck. After this,
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of one hundred dollars or more today, when you hear the bleak button on radio and tv, it's almost always in pre recorded contents like a reality, tv show or a sick com, but its rarely used in life broadcast think about all the times. You ve seen something go horribly wrong on live tv like when will psmith slap chris rocket, the oscars, then he started yelling and they just cut off his sound same thing anytime,
personal athlete- loses their cool about james eventually was carried to the bench the this is Krantz might are trying to get. My silence works just fine as a replacement for a bad word on television, because there,
images being broadcast, but on the radio silence doesn't cut it. People think silence is dead. Air for years live radio used the bleep sound effect, but they stopped in the nineteen seventy and that's because of one board operator.
Who really did not like the blue button? Most of the time you didn't need to bleak, which again is it? Are you you're calling it a bleep only because you gotta call it something: that's really just a tone to fill dead air while the naughtiness went away.
At richard factor. You heard from him earlier. He was a board operator at w a b c in the nineteen sixties, but a few years after that richard started a new audio company with some friends called even tied, which
came in huge deal in the audio world. They created all kinds of effects for audio engineers, some of which were used by David Bowe. We and Eddy been Helen, but one of their inventions in nineteen. Seventy seven change radio forever. It was called the broadcast. Audio
The way I have a lot of trouble just talking to standard human saying richard. What do you do? I said? Well, I'm an inventor! Oh, do you have any paths? Yes, what's your hand on the thing that keeps be naughty words off the radio. Basically richards broadcast away a lousy board operator to cut out swear word
without using the bleak button. Here's how it works. Remember, most live radio broadcasts run on a seven second tape. Delay meaning lie broadcasts.
they get transmitted seven seconds later than they happen in real life. Richardson
The broadcasts delay took it a step. Further machine has a black panel with a giant yellow button in the middle of the word dump on it. If somebody swears, the board operator can hit the dumbarton and cut straight from the tape too late broadcast to the life iii, essentially skipping over this, where why doubt what what do I do
were dumped seemed like the rights, the right name for that particular function. Well, because that's precisely what you're doing you're, taking some words and dumping them into infinity, were nowhere take your pick.
And you ve given me the opportunity to. I think they call them props, give proper
My wedding, Kenny Schaefer was
We complains that he doesn't get enough credit for stuff, but he's the one who invented the dumper. If you dont correctly, the bad word just disappears and no one's the wiser. We wanted to hear the dump button and action, so we called up Jake glance: the head of broadcast engineering at serious exam, a compass
that hey look at that one's ninety nine percent, invisible higher on the year high in February. They call you think this is your color number. Why is this your first time doing this on the economical person? No, perhaps you didn't realize you're talking two of the former host of
ex waken bake after his foray into college radio, stardom jake spent years working as aboard operator- and he says, hitting the dump button- is the thing that keeps bore adopts a week. It
it's over wellmere costs, especially if you try and engineer a very complicated complicated shall deal alive, collars working against the clock that you have some hard times. Perhaps you have to hit it's it's overwhelming. Let's do a demonstration of the dump button inaction for this exercise, I'm going to call into a live radio show, and let's pretend gum drop is the worst swear. Word you ve ever heard
but a mind gum drop, a guy who we all we are. We ready to feel ready, sir
This is k m p. I all architecture, all the time we're coming to you ma from beautiful uptown, oakland, california, sunny and seventy three degrees. Today, we're talking le corbusier, a misunderstood genius or overrated hack. You've got chris from toronto on the line or on their long walk or deviate. Get outta here with that building
machines are living at which I mean,
I want to live in a machine that neuron got people would live in. These people come building with
can't random attitude anywhere caused by categories good at so well. I'm renting and raising a boot up like jake, would hit the big, yellow dump button, and this is what folks would here.
on the radio building? Our dreams are living, at which I mean
we want a legitimate she'd, neuron gaunt people would lead to me.
Mary passionate, no get. Thank you. Chris S, collar. Ok, forget it is hoped that the effect of this is not, and I encourage people to test the the board ups ability,
react, and please do not call him to test this. With your local board operator, I used to be a board operator as just inconsiderate. Now you might have noticed an issue with the dump button.
After you eliminate the seven seconds away your kindness screwed, if somebody swears again later in the programme, so richer factors broadcast delay included a second
innovation time stretching software. That would
slowly rebuild the tape the way over the next few minutes. Basically, the software looks for little pauses in speech and then stretches. The mountain view was a talk. Show format
He cannot add the delay between pauses and take advantage of that. So the natural speech, which cannot be
yeah elongated, I guess the delays would be built when there was silence between the words you can build up of say within a couple minutes to get to a safe amount of.
Lay time if you listen to live radio, but a good chance. You ve heard the dump button inaction and is a good chance. You didn't notice it. The appeal of the dump button is obvious: a white south square were it makes it seem like nothing happened. Richard factor says for the most part, radio stations prefer the dump button. To that
intrusive, obnoxious, bleep wealth for sure in terms of programming? It's better if it says
was. I have no doubt at all that when you run a programme and nobody can tell
something's gone wrong, you're better off, but is this seamless transition better for listeners? Maria booth steals the culture riker. She thinks that silence is taking away important context and she says the bleep sound is actually better. I think,
that the bleep is actually more revealing and better fur listeners or viewers. Then any
their form of censorship like what we have now the potentially is they can erase the thing that you're not
seamlessly eraser remove. If you
I know that there was a corner at all and I think that's really hard.
We all know how manipulative meat
can be an
the viewer listener may remain completely knave too, that you know
Never alterations had been made. I think bleep is healthier. Let's consider an incident from early and Jake glances career when drink was eighteen before he was way
in beijing, he was working as a board operator for a politics, so on a black owned radio station in new england. One afternoon the show was hosting a debate between two candidates running for office. A black candidate was running against a white incumbent and Jake says the incumbent was not thrilled with the situation. The incoming loses his
his cool at one point and I'm not sure if it was the end word whatever he said,
jake remembers it being slur, and so Jake started to panic.
Have the delay right in front of me and I'm ready to press the the big red button and I go to press it cause at this point. I'm like off the course of the year stations can get fine they're going to. You, know
Excommunicate me my whole careers over, so
in a situation like this, what's the right move, if these
it's word goes out on the air jacon and the station could get in trouble with the fcc. If jake uses the bleep button, maybe the trivial
This is a really serious situation, because the bleak button is kind of funny. But if jake does a seamless caught and just eliminates the whole thing, then the listener could be missing out on a really telling information about somebody running for office. Clearly, none of these are perfect solutions. Ok
here's what actually happened. Jake station manager was standing right beside him and when the incumbent,
ranting, the manager, told Jake to let the slur go out on the radio
The story is important. Know that jake's manager was black. The general manager held my hand from pressing the button, and he goes. This is a news program or we're okay, not so sure about that. But yeah I was like. Ok, it turns out jake didn't get in trouble. The station wasn't fined. In fact, Jake thinks this moment impacted the election in a positive way. Lo and behold that the incumbent lost the race, his true colors came out, so to speak. When it comes to censorship, the right choice isn't always obvious. If it's a call between a bleep, sound or a seamless cut or including a swear word, I actually don't know what I prefer. There are good arguments for all three for me. The whole thing just feels like a big paradox.
The er
I
Hmm!
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Transcript generated on 2022-11-12.