Censoring The Emmys

I watched the Emmys tonight. Helaine recorded it, knowing we’d be home after 8:00.

Boy there are a lot of people on TV I don’t know!

With the show over, I have two questions. Is Ryan Seacrest the right guy to be host? And, why were there three obvious edits to censor material?

Seacrest first. I remember him on CNet TV. He was a correspondent on the show Richard Hart hosted. He was fine.

Am I surprised he’s hosting a huge, killer hit like American Idol? Absolutely. But he’s fine as a straight host.

No cheap jokes, please.

The Emmys normally have an entertainer as host. I don’t see Seacrest in that role. In fact, as the show opened up, Ray Romano basically took over the host’s job of doing a monologue.

That brings me to point two. Why was Roman censored? This was more than a beep. The full video feed cut away.

I’ve seen Ray Romano in person. He is not a blue comic. Even if he said a ‘curse,’ I’m convinced it wouldn’t have offended my mom or her mom (though it’s a little late to ask my grandma).

The same cutaway thing happened to Katherine Heigl and Sally Field.

Actually, with Heigl they didn’t cut away soon enough and so America got to see her mouth the word “shit.” Crude and inappropriate as it is, I’ve never understood why shit is considered a curse word. It has little to do with the more sexually oriented words that can get a network fined… or worse.

I believe Sally Field got pulled for saying goddamn. It’s not polite to say goddamn. It’s never been my choice to say that word on TV. But it’s Sally Field for heavens sake.

I must be missing something? What could Sally Field possibly say that would injure me?

I believe it was Letterman’s staff who began the tradition of having weird intros to the comedy writing nominees. That’s something I now look forward to. I enjoy it a lot.

I also liked the nice eulogy for Tom Snyder, pieced together from contemporaneous remarks by late night talk show hosts. Tom liked adulation. He would have enjoyed that genuine emotion.

2 thoughts on “Censoring The Emmys”

  1. They’re doing the editing because the Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether or not the FCC can fine for “fleeting expletives”. This all has to do with Bono saying “f&ck” (I can’t spell it out, MT won’t let me) at I believe the Golden Globes a few years ago (pre-“Janet”). Back then the FCC said “whatever, it was an isolated incident” but after “Janet”, they went back and said, “um.. we lied… here’s a fine”.

    Since that, and especially since the entire world saw Janet Jackson’s boob for like a half-second, the networks have become insanely paranoid.

    Plus, since this was Fox, I’m betting they were just itching to cut any “criticism” from the presenters.

    -A

  2. They censored Sally Field because Fox didn’t want her comments about the war to make it to air. I believe she said “If mothers/women were in charge there would be no more goddamn wars.”

    I’ll confess I wasn’t watching I was at a b-day party for a 70 year old friend who is off to Croatia for a vacation.

    I like reading about the media industry in my former home state. Thanks for posting.

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