Digital TV News

Hitchcock block shock

Tuesday 20 December, 2011

By Duncan Heaney

Overzealous profanity checker leaves Virgin Media customers saying: "What the Dickens?"

If you’re easily offended, look away now because we’re going to be discussing some naughty words. Like Dickens, Hitchcock and, worst of all... canals.

Now, you’re probably thinking that there’s not much offensive about any of those words, but it seems that Virgin Media’s automated profanity checker would respectfully disagree.

Subscribers to the cable TV service were surprised when they started noticing bizarre censorship to the television listings on their electronic program guides and TV menus over the last weekend.

Some of the world’s most celebrated storytellers were targeted. The 39 Steps was identified as a “HitchC**k remake”, and Victorian-themed comedy The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff wasn’t so much a Dickens pastiche as it was a “D**kens” pastiche.

It wasn’t just writers and film-makers that were seeing stars, as “Jarvis C**ker’s Sunday Service” proved. The auto-censorship had the amusing effect of making even the most charmingly gentle shows slightly sinister, as people who flicked over to The Golden Age of CA**ls might have noticed.

Other listings included music quiz “Never Mind the BuzzC**ks”, and the Will Smith movie Hancock, which became “Hanc**k. Sadly it didn’t become a better movie.

Arsenal were censored in a listing for Match of the Day, leaving a number of Chelsea fans in the Broadbandchoices.co.uk office nodding in approval. Of course, many online were also quick to point out that turning “Arsenal” into “A***nal” makes it considerably more offensive.

Virgin Media admitted the snafu, explaining it wasn’t intentionally being a Hitchcock blocker. The company sent a statement to the Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw, explaining: “Over the weekend a temporarily overzealous profanity checker took offence at certain programme titles. The altered titles have been swiftly an*lysed and we're fixing any remaining glitches.”

Photo by Matt and Kim Rudge