Research: Censorship

Many music videos can be censored for several reasons. This happens because the content would be seen as inappropriate for younger viewers. This is because some of the images that can be seen doing something that is violent, or maybe they originally use taboo language.
This kind of thing is not what children should be seeing or hearing as they tend to pick things up easily so they will end up repeating these things.

Some of the things that will usually be censored are:
Swearing/Taboo language. This is evident in many videos, but one example is Cee Lo Green’s ‘Forget you’ as some of these words have been changed to suit all audiences, but not many people are aware that the original version has bad language in it.
Sex: A good example of this would be Birthday Sex by Jeremih. Although the sexual theme is obvious with the title, the majority of the song is done discretely but there are a few lines in the bridge that is removed when it is played on the music channels.
Certain political views: Some songs are seen as very controversial because of their political views. For example Shoot the Dog by George Michael was seen as inappropriate because of this. Some people took high offence to the images and lyrics.
Some videos can get banned because of the extremities of the content. Some songs or videos received so much negative feedback that they had to be banned and taken out of the public eye.

In terms of cutting out words in a song, there are a few different ways of doing it so the whole song wouldn’t have to be restricted to the watershed rules. These include:
Blanking: The word cannot be heard but they music is still heard.
Bleeping: A ‘bleep’ sound is used to replace the word.
Repeating: The previous word is heard twice in replacement of the censored word.
Disc Scratching: A DJs scratching of a disc is heard in replacement of the censored word.
Replacing the word entirely: The artist will record a new version of the song, replacing the censored word with another appropriate word.