The New York Times (4/9, Elliott) reports, “In cartoons, the Road Runner goes ‘Beep, beep.’ On Madison Avenue, the popular onomatopoeia is pronounced ‘Bleep, bleep.’” Advertisers “are winking at the contentious issue of content regulation by using bleeping sounds in commercials and video clips. The bleeps mimic how television and radio obscure bad language in live news coverage or taped reality shows. Many times, the bleeps heard in commercials are covering actual expletives, which are written into the scripts solely to be censored. … Sometimes, there is nothing blue or objectionable about the words being hidden. Rather, consumers are being encouraged to jump to the conclusion that they are being protected from something crude.” The Times continues, “As a device to draw the attention of a bored or distracted audience, bleeps are an updated version of tried and true tactics like loud sound effects or laugh tracks.” The indecency rules that govern broadcasting “do not…apply to cable TV, satellite TV, satellite radio or the Internet. That makes bleeping more common in those media.”
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