Bleep Censor - History of The Bleep

History of The Bleep

Bleeping has been used for many years as a means of censoring TV programs to remove content not deemed suitable for "family" or "nighttime" viewing and personal information for privacy. The bleep censor is a software module, manually operated by a broadcast technician. A bleep is sometimes accompanied by a digital blur or box over the speaker's mouth in cases where the removed speech may still be easily understood by lip-reading.

On closed caption subtitling, bleeped words are usually represented by the phrase "(bleep)", sometimes the phrase "", sometimes hyphens (e.g. f--k), and occasionally asterisks (e.g. ****), remaining faithful to the audio track. Where open captions are used (generally in instances where the speaker is not easily understood), a blank is used where the word is bleeped. Occasionally, bleeping is not reflected in the captions, allowing the unedited dialogue to be seen. Sometimes, a "black bar" can be seen for closed caption bleep, or pixels.

Bleeping is normally only used in unscripted programs - documentaries, radio features, panel games etc. - since scripted drama and comedy are designed to suit the time of broadcast. In the case of comedies, most bleeping may be for humorous purposes.

When films are edited for daytime TV, broadcasters usually prefer not to bleep swearing, but cut out the segment containing it, replace the speech with different words, or cover it with silence or a sound effect. In the first example, the film may (unintentionally) become nonsensical or confusing if the removed portion contains an element important to the plot. The bleep is sometimes used for privacy reasons, concealing things such as names and addresses.

Bleeping is commonly used in English- and Japanese-language broadcasting, but rarely used in some other languages (such as Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Polish), displaying the varying attitudes between countries; some are more liberal towards swearing, less inclined to use strong profanities in front of a camera in the first place, or unwilling to censor.