The pre-watershed editing of movies

Watching Mrs Doubtfire tonight on Channel 4 and it was, understandably, packed with edits to cut out swear words and one instance of a middle finger.

I work as a video editor (sadly not in TV) and I've always wondered whose job it is to screen a movie before its airing to rid it of any profanities or unsuitable material. Are there specific staff members at Channel 4 whose job it is to stick a movie into Adobe Premiere and edit it? There were some relatively creative workarounds that I noticed, more so than some of the hack jobs I've seen ITV commit.

I've never been too fond of Channel 4's edits to The Simpsons, nor do I understand why so much more is cut compared to the same episodes on Sky One. Are FTA channels held to a higher standard?

Channel 4 must have two edits of films because every time something gets aired on Channel 4/E4 and then later on Film4 (or vice versa), the commercials are in a different place in the film. Home Alone, when aired on Film4 puts a break about 10 minutes before the end of the film. This does not happen when Channel 4 aired it and IIRC the commercial breaks were in different places.

Mind you that being said, Film4 have aired 12 rated films before at 7pm and cut out a lot of the stronger language, primarily the F word and the B word, then marked them as PG. Mrs Doubtfire is a 12 but according to IMDB had a few seconds chopped out of it to make it a PG when it was in the cinema, and it only became a 12 rating some 20 odd years later.

Channel 4 do make vicious cuts to programmes. When they used to show Friends, they completely skipped out ‘The One with the Free Porn’ during repeat runs, despite it being integral to the storyline of Ross and Emily. I also recall during T4 once when they were showing ‘The One with the Cake’, that they used a clip from this scene with the ‘they put my baby’s face on a penis!’ line for the after-the-break trail, but censored it during the actual broadcast.

When it comes to The Simpsons, it’s worth bearing in mind that Sky One don’t show some of the ruder episodes until after the watershed. Channel 4 don’t do this so they’re censored heavily instead.

There was a recent episode of The Simpsons (about 2 years ago) that Sky censored, a brief scene where Homer poured bleach down his ear. Presumably this was censored on the grounds of it being possible imitable behaviour, but they managed to leave a brief flash of it in which made it even more prominent than if it had been left uncensored.

At least we don’t have Live & Kicking showing it anymore as if it was a children’s programme.

Speaking of the Simpsons being treated as a children's show, from the archives:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1512890.stm

This was soon followed by a rant on one of the older presentation sites, I think it was Watched It, about the result.

Yes I remember that, because it was basically the last update to Watched It and remained online until shortly before Geocities closed down, when it was replaced with a ‘Watched It has now closed’ message.

Gavin & Stacey Xmas Special was edited the other day (on Gold or Dave or similar) to remove Smithy's "It's just been a bit of a s**t Christmas, you know" at 20:50.

Thanks for that VMPhil, found it now:

Channel 4’s editing policy is simply one I don’t get, they over edit The Simpsons like mad. Earlier last year I watched Airplane! on Film4 at 7pm and that was shown uncut. Swearing, glue sniffing, breasts and fecal matter intact.

ITV also have a habit of editing Films, I don’t think they ever have ever shown Kindergarten Cop in full.

Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie is also cut by ITV despite it being a PG, most notably when you see Bean drinking straight out of a kettle and then giving the finger to strangers down in Hollywood right at the end of the film.

Bean's colleague's rant when he first sees what Bean did to the Whistler's Mother painting is chopped in half on ITV too.

Mind you the strangest situation programme wise was probably when Nickelodeon for whatever reason decided to start showing the live action Mr Bean series after a while of airing the animated ones. Considering some of the things Mr Bean does in the live action shows (and the fact Nickelodeon chopped the more irresponsible stuff out like getting in a dryer, drinking washing-up liquid and using a gun to put a light out), it was surprising that show ended up on Nickelodeon of all places.

I was watching Do-It-Yourself Mr. Bean today from the DVD as it’s the episode set on New Year’s Eve/Day. There’s a bit where he decapitates a picture of Diana (and Charles) when cutting out a bit of his wall. I wonder if they keep that in the repeats!

Wasn’t the animated series of Mr. Bean shown on prime time ITV1 when it started?

I presume it was available 'on the shelf' as Paramount Comedy/Comedy Central showed it semi-regularly.