Shit - Usage in Media - Television - United States

United States

"Shit" was one of the original "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV", a comedy routine by American Comedian George Carlin. In the United States, although the use of the word is censored on broadcast network television (while its synonym crap is not usually subject to censorship), the FCC permitted some exceptions. The 14 October 1999 episode of Chicago Hope is believed to be the first show (excluding documentaries) on U.S. network television to contain the word shit in uncensored form. The word also is used in a later ER episode "On the Beach" by Dr. Mark Greene, experiencing the final stages of a deadly brain tumor. Although the episode was originally aired uncensored, the "shit" utterance has since been edited out in syndicated reruns.

An episode of South Park, "It Hits the Fan", originally aired on 20 June 2001, was a parody of the hype over the Chicago Hope episode. "Shit" is used 162 times, and a counter in the corner of the screen tallies the repetitions. South Park airs on American cable networks, outside the regulatory jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where censorship of vulgar dialogue is at the discretion of the cable operators.

American terrestrial radio stations must abide by FCC guidelines on obscenity to avoid punitive fines, unlike satellite radio. These guidelines do not define exactly what constitutes obscenity, but it has been interpreted by some commissioners as including any form of words like shit and fuck, for whatever use.

Despite this, the word has been featured in popular songs that have appeared on broadcast radio in cases where the usage of the word is not audibly clear to the casual listener, or on live television. In the song "Man in the Box" by Alice in Chains, the line "Buried in my shit" was played unedited over most rock radio stations. The 1973 Pink Floyd song "Money" from the album Dark Side of the Moon contains the line "Don't give me that do goody good bullshit," and has frequently been broadcast unedited on US radio. The 1980 hit album Hi Infidelity by REO Speedwagon contained the song "Tough Guys" which had the line "she thinks they're full of shit," which was played on broadcast radio. On 3 December 1994, Green Day performed "Geek Stink Breath", on Saturday Night Live, shit was not edited from tape delay live broadcast. The band did not appear on the show again until 9 April 2005.

Some notable instances of censorship of the word from broadcast television and radio include Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner." Although radio stations have sometimes played an unedited version containing the line "funky shit going down in the city." The songs was also released with a "radio edit" version, replacing the "funky shit" with "funky kicks". Another version of "Jet Airliner" exists in which the word "shit" is faded out. Likewise, the Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" has a line about having no idea "what kind of shit was about to go down," and has a radio edit version without the word. Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" video had the original album's use of the word censored in its video. The music video title "...On the Radio (Remember the Days)" by Nelly Furtado replaced by the original title "Shit on the Radio (Remember the Days)." This also happened to "That's That Shit" by Snoop Dogg featuring R. Kelly, which became "That's That". In Avril Lavigne's song "My Happy Ending," the Radio Disney edit of the song replaces "all the shit that you do" with "all the stuff that you do." Likewise, in the song "London Bridge" by the Black Eyed Peas member Fergie, the phrase "Oh Shit" is repeatedly used as a background line. A radio edit of this song replaced "Oh Shit" with "Oh Snap."