Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Is that supposed to be an honest question?!

Why broadcast movies with the blue-toned dialogue cut out? Hmm... Could it be that for the price they pay for broadcasting a movie, they get two hours of television plus two hours more each time they re-run it, all for one flat fee. If they actually had to pay to have all those hours of television made, it would cost far, far more than what they pay for movies. It costs between $1 and 2M per hour to make tv, on average. So if they can pick up the broadcast rights to some movie for a few mill and then show it five or six times (at 2h per), they've just saved themselves a bundle.

On top of that, the kinds of movies that generally "require" (by Broadcast Standards' standards, I'll get back to that) bleeping and/or overdubbing are also the ones that draw the ratings -- and the good, plum advertisers. So, not only are they saving money on running movies, they're also making money. If they can turn their broadcast of a particular movie into some kind of an "event," they can also up the ad rates accordingly. ("Tonight, the world television premiere of Guns, Bombs, and Automobiles!")

Thirdly, well, Broadcast Standards, aka the board of censors. The networks more or less live in fear of the FCC, and so have developed a policy over the last who knows how many years to eviscerate anything that looks like it might offend some blue-nosey horny toad somewhere out of television programming. So they bleep the movies (which costs them a bit in post-production fees, but oh well), keep Broadcast Standards fat and happy, and watch the money roll in.

I'm not sure why that isn't completely and utterly blinkin' obvious to whoever it is that wrote that blog post, though...