Radio Censorship Part 2: Its Inconsistency

As mentioned in my previous post, my complaint with radio censorship is not about whether radio should be censored, but rather that radio censorship is not consistent and uniform. When in the privacy of your own home or your own area, I believe you should be able to listen to anything you want, whether it is or isn't censored for its content. I actually prefer unedited songs to edited songs when I'm listening to music.

Radio, however, is a public entity that can be accessed by people of all ages. Inappropriate content, whether it is song lyrics or comments from the DJs, is always readily available. From what I have observed, it seems much easier for DJs and radio personalities to censor themselves, so only occasionally is it a huge problem. With music, though, it's another story.

Radio stations are given certain versions of songs to play, so of course that's what they use. A good percentage of the songs played on the radio today (especially on hip hop and R&B stations) have edited versions due to explicit, obscene, and inappropriate language. It's great that radio stations play the edited versions of these songs, but these versions are never the same across the board.

Honestly, I don't think I should have to hear 5 different versions of the same song on 5 different radio stations. When I'm listening to the radio, I switch stations quite often. There have been times when I listened to a song on one station and then as soon as it ended, I listened to the same song again on another station. Of course, each edited version of that song was different on each of the two stations.

A few examples:

Lyric--"I just wanna f*** every girl in the world/Every model, every singer, every actress, every diva." (Every Girl, by Young Money)
Station A: censors the word sloppily--you can tell what is said
Station B/C: censors the word completely

Lyric--"I've got every reason to feel like I'm that b****." (Ego, by Beyonce)
Station A: states the word
Station B: censors the word sloppily--you can tell what is said
Station C: censors the word completely

Younger radio audiences do not need to be exposed to this language. As long as there are similar radio stations with a shared audience, listeners will continually switch back and forth as I do. And if one radio station plays the version of the song that is edited well and another station plays another version of the same song that is not edited well, younger audiences will still be exposed to inappropriate language. Unless all radio stations can play the same versions of these songs--versions that are actually appropriate for all ages--I think radio censorship of music is becoming useless.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment.