Anyone watching Channel 4's new English Civil War costume drama The Devil's Whore on Sky might have noticed the EPG getting a touch overzealous in protecting viewers' morals.
Yes, The Devil's Whore was apparently too racy for Sky's EPG, which displayed the title throughout the programme as The Devil's Wh**e.
A similar glitch afflicted the iTunes store earlier in the year, in which seemingly-innocuous titles were ruthlessly scrubbed of anything that might constitute innuendo - with words like "johnny" being censored, much to the confusion of Johnny Cash fans. Won't somebody think of the children?
To be fair to Sky, there aren't really any other interpretations of the word "whore" - but was it a software glitch in the EPG, or are Sky out to protect viewers from their dirty thoughts? A touch redundant, we feel, since the title appeared on-screen at each ad break, and the programme was heavily trailed, with newspaper ads and TV spots all shouting its title to all and sundry.
Channel 4 evidently thought so too, as a Sky spokesperson revealed to Wotsat: "Based on a list of words which have the potential to offend, Sky sometimes asks channels to use asterisks in their EPG listings. Prior to broadcast last night, Channel 4 had agreed to edit their listing based on feedback from Sky. Since broadcast Channel 4 has made the request to revert back to the show’s unedited title, which Sky has accepted."
Anyway, the drama's cracking stuff - John Simm's particularly good as an amoral mercenary. Sky+ the repeat on Saturday at 9:10pm, or catch it again on Channel 4's catch-up service 4oD.
With the iTunes incident surely it was an error that the filter was applied to artist's names at all, with this.. Well, potentially they're damned if they do & damned if they don't.
It's a very fine line these days and, as you say, there is no other interpretation of whore, however ads for this show do appear to be everywhere - slightly to my surprise actually, at how often I've seen the ads recently.
Posted by Helen-LG (127.0.0.1) on November 20, 2008 at 05:46 PM GMT
Website: http://www.lgblog.co.uk/ #
Posted by colin (127.0.0.1) on November 20, 2008 at 09:35 PM GMT #
Stuff like this gets nuked, yet wholly inappropriate material is often shown before the watershed (by all PSBs) ::)
As an aside, C4 really are delivering the best TV programming in the UK right now. Well done C4!!!
Posted by SatScene (127.0.0.1) on December 02, 2008 at 01:33 AM GMT
Website: http://www.satscene.co.uk #