Bleep filled emmys last night. They bleeped Sally Field for saying “goddamn”. For some reason this is a long standing taboo on TV. When I worked in public TV we used to have to “live bleep” network feeds. We’d get a note that at xx:xx into the show please bleep “goddamn”. The program director told me they’d get more complaints about goddamn getting by than anything else.

My favorite was an airing of Soundstage featuring David Bromberg. His line “I graduated Phi Beta goddamn Kappa from that school” from “I Will not be your Fool”. I had never seen David Bromberg and was blown away, he was so great. When the time came I sat there with my finger on the button and completely missed bleeping at all.

By the way our bleeps were a simple audio drop out. Fox chose 3 times that I saw to kill all audio for like 5 seconds an cut to an odd overhead camera shot. In the case of Sally Field this made it look like they were editing her rant against the “goddamn war” instead of just trying to catch the “goddamn”.