The people who
patrol the
airwaves in search of
foul language. This may be more specifically applicable to the
United States'
FCC, and to
radio. I'm sure many
college radio DJs received some sort of
lecture from the program director, as I did during the mid-
80s, which was, perhaps more than now, a time in which the FCC tried to put the Fear of God (or of
Meese, anyway) into those unpredictable broadcasters on the "
Left of the Dial". You almost had the impression of blue-haired
Reagan appointees, drunk on power like some
Barney Fife minus the watchful eye of
Sheriff Taylor for the week.
Under no circumstances were you to let any of those seven dirty words out into the ether, whether it came from a record, a cartridge, a CD, or your lips. Since my shift was usually an overnight one, I inadvertently let slip some such words, via the occasional spoken word recording, or via songs like the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams". Oops! But I never got caught by one of those real-or-imagined blue-hairs.
Nowadays, stations will either play a humorous disclaimer before playing any offending material; when Superchunk's "Slack Motherfucker" was a hot item, for example, the disclaimer cartridge at a local station got plenty of work. Other stations will merely try to hide the offending syllables, eliminating the need for a disclaimer.