Yesterday I wrote about watching the movie Groundhog Day on Country Music Television and the fact that they’d muted the word gay from one scene.
I questioned why they did so since the scene simply involved Bill Murray’s character saying that a waiter was gay and the waiter calmly confirming the fact.
Well it seems that someone at Viacom (the owners of MTV and CMT) saw the post and decided to track me down. I suppose it wouldn’t be too hard to find me (Patrick Edaburn not being that uncommon of a name).
They then called me and put me in touch with the VP in charge of standards and practices at MTV to apologize for the incident and explain what happened.
At MTV/CMT, along with most networks, they screen for certain words to make sure they aren’t used in an offensive manner (in this case presumably a gay slur). Since they just got Groundhog Day they went to review the movie for those words.
In the case of Groundhog Day they were also looking to shorten the movie for time, and it seems somewhere along the line there was a mistake made and the word was muted.
They’ve fixed the mistake (I checked a showing this afternoon to confirm they did this) and the word is now restored.
I say good for them not only for fixing the mistake but also for taking the time to let me know.