Another embarrassment for CBS: Too much muting in a Grammy ceremony performance

[alp227]

It's bad enough that CBS selectively allowed a Focus on the Family anti-abortion advertisement starring college football star Tim Tebow and his mother over an advertisement by a gay dating service and (I believe) another one promoting tolerance of LGBTs by the United Church of Christ. Back in 2004, CBS rejected liberal group MoveOn.org's ad "Bush in 30 Seconds" for violating its "no advocacy ads" policy. This year, CBS sort of tweaked the definition of "advocacy ads". Today, CBS dropped the ball again.

Very late during today's Grammy Awards ceremony, there was a rap performance by Drake, Eminem, and Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne performed "Drop the World" with Eminem. Immediately afterwards, Drake performed "Forever" with Lil Wayne and Eminem. Travis Barker provided drums for the live performance, unlike in the studio versions.

I watched the Grammys live on an East Coast CBS feed (private message me to find out how) and couldn't help but notice incompetent muting during these performances. Instead of cutting out the profanities, the censors ended up cutting out entire lines of lyrics instead!

The evidence on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/EricHatfield/statuses/8485046303
http://twitter.com/LPRETTY4Eva/statuses/8484648097
http://twitter.com/logic718/statuses/8484628779

And there's an LA Times article out "Words wrapped in long silences" about this. It reports: "the show's producers were responsible for the measure", and "a show producer confirmed the silences were not the result of an audio failure."

Lyrics for "Drop the World": http://www.metrolyrics.com/drop-the-world-lyrics-lil-wayne.html
Lyrics for "Forever": http://www.metrolyrics.com/forever-lyrics-drake.html

I live in California, so I got a chance to watch the tape-delayed West Coast edit of the Grammy ceremony. To pass time over what I'd already seen live, I watched an InuYasha DVD. Then I watched the Lil Wayne et al. performance and noticed these considerable differences:
- Wayne muted himself (pausing himself over the F-words etc.) at times; otherwise the muting covered only the bad words and vicinity.
- Eminem occasionally substituted dirty language for less offensive words.
- Overall, if you were watching the Grammys in the West Coast (tape-delayed) you could hear more than you could hear if you watched it live in the East Coast.

In both coasts, the performance took place about 10 mins. after 11PM, which is 70 minutes after 10PM, the cutoff time for the FCC's decency rules that ban the "Seven Dirty Words" from being uttered on-air.