Bleep censor

Censor boxes, such as the one above, may be used along with the bleeps to prevent the audience from lip reading the swearer's words. Above, this animation says "Oh-", followed by the censor.

Bleeping has been used for many years as a means of censoring TV and radio programs to remove content not deemed suitable for "family", "daytime", "broadcasting", or "international" viewing, as well as sensitive classified information for security.[2] The bleep censor is a software module, manually operated by a broadcast technician.[3] A bleep is sometimes accompanied by a digital blur or box over the speaker's mouth in cases where the removed speech may still be easily understood by lip reading.[4]

On closed caption subtitling, bleeped words are usually represented by "[bleep]", "[expletive]", "[censored]", "[explicit]", or the profanities with letters substituted with asterisks non-letter symbols, called grawlixes. Where open captions are used (generally in instances where the speaker is not easily understood), a blank is used where the word is bleeped. Occasionally, bleeping is not reflected in the captions, allowing the unedited dialogue to be seen. Sometimes, a "black bar" can be seen for closed caption bleep.[5]

Other uses of bleeping may include reality television, infomercials, game shows and daytime/late night talk shows, where the bleep conceals personally identifying information such as ages, surnames, addresses/hometowns, phone numbers, and attempts to advertise a personal business without advanced or appropriate notice, in order to maintain the subject's privacy (as seen for subjects arrested in episodes of COPS).[6]

Bleeping is commonly used on television programs that use profane words that are forbidden to television networks. Adult comedies use bleep censors to block strong profanities that cannot be used on television, or to allow the content to be broadcast before the watershed in many countries. The 2008 series The Middleman, which aired on the ABC Family network, included the occasional profanity in dialogue, which was bleeped for humorous purposes (with a black bar or a fuzzy image superimposed over the speaker's mouth). Very rarely, the bleep will be light enough to hear the swear word over it.

During a playing of Scenes From a Hat from the 100th episode of the U.S. version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, one notable scene was "Statements that will get bleeped by the censor." For each word to be bleeped out that was used by Wayne Brady, Greg Proops, and Colin Mochrie (in that order), a red bar was placed over their mouths with the word "CENSORED" in white text.

On April 21, 2010, the South Park episode 201 aired, which bleeped out all mentions of Muhammad and covered him with a box that says "Censored" due to death threats.

The bleep censor is sometimes used as a sense of humor. At least one swear word was (intentionally) bleeped out in movies such as: Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water, The Cat In The Hat, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, and other movies, respectively. Bleeping is also used for stronger words used in Family Guy, The Simpsons, etc. In the Arthur episode "Bleep," D.W. hears a swear word which is bleeped out, then starts saying it to her mother, who tells her that swear words are not appropriate things to say. In the Spongebob episode Sailor Mouth, about 34 swear words were bleeped out.