OFCOM and Regulation

The following quote is from a Guardian article regarding music videos:

"The media watchdog has ordered broadcasters to be more careful about showing sexually explicit music videos before the 9pm watershed.
The regulator, Ofcom, on Friday issued new guidance, focusing on the visual as well as the verbal content of music videos in a bid to tighten the enforcement of existing watershed rules.
Broadcasters have been told to take particular care masking or editing offensive language where possible, in order to protect children."

This shows the extent of power that Ofcom has over music videos being televised. They can restrict videos from being televised before the watershed due to 'verbal' and 'visual' content.

This is a quote from the parental advisory website:

"If a music video is not suitable for broadcast at any time of day, the broadcaster will discuss edits that can be made with the record label. If the edits cannot be agreed, the broadcaster will not broadcast the music video at any time of day."

This shows that often people making music videos have to make changes in order to televise their videos. I feel that this is something that can have a strong effect on the rap genre which we are giving particular focus to. For example, sexual themes and drug use are often prominent within rap videos which are two things which can cause offence. 

Another thing that needs regulating within rap is the use of swearing and explicit language. Any albums or songs that contain swearing require a logo saying 'Parental Advisory: Explicit Content' to be placed on CD cases or advertisements. Furthermore, for when songs are played on the radio, swearing needs to be cut out. This leads to rap artists often making a radio edit for their song, even altering the lyrics to stop the song from sounding too jumpy and unnatural. Sometimes songs can be censored altogether. An extremely prominent example of this is in 2000 when, after the Columbine school shooting, Eminem wanted to release I'm Back with the lyrics: 

"I take seven kids from Columbine, stand 'em all in line... and that's a whole school of bullies shot up all at one time."

This was considered too insensitive and was his label decided to cut the words 'kids' and 'Columbine' even from the explicit version of the album. 


Sources: 
Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/media/tvandradioblog/2011/sep/30/ofcom-moves-to-enforce-watershed

Parental Advisory: http://parental-advisory.co.uk/music-on-tv/music-videos-on-tv/