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Comment by jtokoph | Hacker News Reader

In the US, many “live” call ins are actually recorded off air (like during commercial breaks) and then played back later.

This gives time to censor, edit or cancel the caller completely. They can also tell the caller to turn off the radio to eliminate noise on the call, but can still hear themselves come on after the call is over.

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the talk radio I'm aware of generally runs on a 10 second delay - short enough to be considered live, but still enough delay that if someone swears (illegal in the US) they can hit the beep button afterwards and overwrite the bad words. I've heard someone call in the next room and that is how it was, plus at various times the host has talked about this.

Things like sports games are generally fully live, but they don't have call in portions and a trained host can be trusted to use clean language.

> swears (illegal in the US)

What's actually keeping that beeping thing still alive in the US? Just inertia of the existing law with no reason to perform the work needed to remove it, or are there people who genuinely feel actual emotional pain upon hearing such language in the US and they are the majority voters?

Many like to listen to the radio (etc.) with children present. Many would prefer their children not be exposed to cursing on a regular basis.

I think this is the biggest one, particularly if you're listening in the car and just scanning up and down the dial— it's easy to stumble across whatever station and not really be aware what it is or who is talking.

If there was a way to send "ratings" metadata then that would change a lot, as you could trivially configure your car radio to just skip those channels (same as how the playstation profile my kids use unsupervised hides M-rated titles).

> If there was a way to send "ratings" metadata then that would change a lot, as you could trivially configure your car radio to just skip those channels.

I image that it should be possible. Many channels already send song information, perhaps that same functionality could be used.

But there's no such law in European countries, yet radio/TV is not a continuous swear-fest. Bleeps don't exist (except when on purpose making it look like the US, or imported). I'm sure there are some guidelines here too, but the US system just gives such condescending impression and the bleep, if anything, draws more rather than less attention to it

One of the biggest ironies is how puritanical we Americans are regarding swearing and the naked body, but extreme violence such as showing people brutally murdered, that's fine.

Yes, the religious voting bloc that still cares about such things for some reason is very powerful.

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