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Early Video Tape Delay + The 7 Forbidden Words…

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

Early Video Tape Delay + The 7 Forbidden Words…

When certain “blue humor”comedians and “colorful personalities” were on live network shows, producers would sometime hedge their bets with a 6 second tape delay and this is how they did it.

Until sometime in the mid 1960s, this is the way you got a 6 second delay for live television events. As shown here, you would have recorded on the left machine, threaded the tape over a few homemade spindles and play it back on the machine on the right for air. In case of a blooper, the director cut to live action before the image got over to the playback head and pray there are no more till you can get to a station break and re sync.

George Carlin’s famous ‘7 Dirty Words’ sketch was first performed in concert May 27, 1972 for his “Class Clown” album. A few years ago, Carlin discussed this in an interview for the Emmy TV Legends bio series. The 4 minute XXX rated clip is below. The famous list is at 2:57, but even though not of the faint of heart, Carlin’s perspective as a true wordsmith, and context is fantastic as always.

At ‘Saturday Night Live’, some of these words have always had a way of just popping into a live show…especially the F word and here’s a brief F’ing history of those “special” moments.

During a sketch in 1980, Paul Shaffer said “f****n’” instead of “floggin’”; in 1981, Charles Rocket, said “I’d like to know who the f**k did it” during a “Who Shot JR?” parody and on the same night Prince sang the lyric “Fightin’ war is such a f****n’ bore”; in 1990, singer Morris Day of The Time said “Where the f**k did this chicken come from?” and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith sang “feedin’ that f****n’ monkey on my back” during their performances.

In 1994, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. sang “Don’t f**k with me” and Adam Horovitz of Beastie Boys sang “So won’t you f****n’ listen” in their performances. In 1997, Norm MacDonald accidentally said, “What the f**k was that?” after flubbing a line during “Weekend Update”. James Hetfield of Metallica sang “F**k ’em man, white knuckle tight” during their performance in 1997. In 2009, Jenny Slate accidentally said, “You know what, you stood up for yourself and I f**king love you for that.”

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23 responses to “Early Video Tape Delay + The 7 Forbidden Words…”

  1. David Stephan

    Wow this is so cool.

  2. Mogens Zender

    Perhaps the wrong place, but why this delay stuff? As far as i know it is only in the US that you are so hysterical sensitive about a few words in broadcasting.
    What is the problem, the music is filled with fuck and related words?

  3. Don Cox

    This was the RCA way. At CBS-Chicago, we used 2 VR-2000’s, with rollers between the two machines.

  4. Robert Beyer

    I had a friend who worked at KYW in Philly in the 80s. He told me about how the station had used a rig like this to insert something like a 20 second delay in Hill Street Blues, one of the highest rated shows of its time. NBC wouldn’t let the locals have any of the spots in the last break and they wanted to tease the 11 o’clock news. During the last break KYW would insert their news promo and rejoin the show for the epilogue, but 20 seconds behind the rest of the network on the live feed. They had the master control op cut to the playback deck instead of the network feed. One night the tape broke during that last break, the epilogue never made air and there was hell to pay.

  5. Don Whittaker

    At KTLA, they did something similar with two Ampex 1000s, except they would use hour or 90 minute reels and end up with a copy of the program as well.

  6. Patrick Clancey

    We used to delay with 2 RCA TR-70C’s side by side. It was a nice straight path from machine to machine.

  7. Patrick Clancey

    So Brendan, if you can say piss and tits on television now, why would you censor them for Facebook?

  8. João Antonio Franz

    Some other example of bad words that have been cut or ended up going to air? 😀

  9. João Antonio Franz

    This classic Monty Python’ sketch (1972) was edited to be on air… the word “marturbating” was cut, but remain in the original tapes, which was released on DVD 😉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToWwiu1HUBU

  10. Lisa J. Kassner

    I remember those days of two inch quad!

  11. Bob Batsche

    I watched the link on George Carlin–it made me think of Howard Stern at WNBC & how he got around that using the Match Game. BLANK WILLOWS. Just fill in the blank—so funny. At WNBC Radio 66, I remember the 10 second delay that was used on Big Wilson during phone calls with listeners. Only had to hit the live button a few times. Looking back, it was the best time I had at NBC but didn’t want to be there then. Can we turn back the hands of time????

  12. John Barrett

    I still have nightmares about all the Reel To Reel Machines Running out at the SAME time on LOVE…In reality it did happen ONE TIME.

  13. Brendan Mullarkey

    The 7 dirty words are now 5 because you now can say p—s and T—-S on TV

  14. Charlie Wilson

    a delay was started at CBS Wash for Nightwatch after some bad words got out. It was 2 Sony 1″ machines with the take-up reel on the recorder “taped” down and the tape threaded on the top of the supply reel of the player. The trick was keeping the slack constant.

  15. Bobby Reyes

    …somehow, I recall an exchange between Letterman and Shaffer on the old Late Night, where Paul says to Dave, ” ..I don’t like that flavor of Tang ” ! ..and Dave replies, “..so what flavor Tang DO you like ? ” ..and Paul replies, “.. P**N ! ! ” ..oh yeah, NBC did blank it out but everybody in the audience laughed ! !

  16. Michael Saffell

    I know a guy who had a contract to televise the Ohio high school football championships years ago and did the same type if thing with a TR-50 and TR-60. The agreement was written that the game couldn’t be broadcast “Live”.

  17. Don Hougland

    In the early 70’s..KHTV Ch39 in Houston used two Ampex 2000s to delay the CBS Thursday & Friday night movies
    for 6 secs, so as to know when promos & stn brks were coming up. After the Nov. book, the lcl CBS stn pre-emptied the net to air a movie for spot carriers. The delay worked well.

  18. Scott Richardson

    Reel tension had to be just right.

  19. Terry Ricketts

    I heard that NASA did this for the moon landing, can anyone qualify this?

  20. Karin Redding

    Same method was used in the 70s using Ampex machines. It was a sneaky way, for the independent station I worked at, to avoid networking regulations.

  21. Jim Young

    It was used into the late 70s at WBIR in Knoxville on two side by side 2 inch VTRs.

  22. David S. Deutsch

    I did it in 1967 with two Ampex 2000s.

  23. Dave Laing

    We used to do the same thing on radio but with two Ampex tape recorders. It worked well unless the tape broke. You could hear audio drop-outs when a splice passed over the heads.

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