Chilling Effects, Part XXIII

An FCC-wary PBS starts bleeping, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

With the excising of three not-so-little terms—"s—," "f—" and "blow job"—from a forthcoming drama on PBS, the Hollywood creative community and broadcasters are finding, not to their liking, that a chilling effect on content has already taken place….

PBS doesn't have a lot of cash sitting around. In fact, the considerable woes now facing PBS are almost directly tied to money—the system simply can't afford to stand up against the government.

Because of this, a new drama called "Cop Shop" starring Richard Dreyfuss and other actors who made a sort of creative labor of love on the cheap for public broadcasting, has been edited to avoid the potential wrath of the FCC.

The best comment comes from series writer David Black: "As for the word 'fuck,' I stand with Vice President Cheney, who recently used the word on the Senate floor and who said sometimes you have to use it unapologetically because you feel better afterward."

Side note: Apparently, you can't say "shit" or "fuck" at the Chronicle, but you can say "blow job."