Now that the CCM radio shows are going out on I Tunes I thought I’d broach the subject of whether or not tracks that contain offensive language should be included on the shows. I know that I Tunes offers a lot of stuff that carries warnings but as this is such a new venture is it a good thing for visitors to see a warning that whilst possibly only covering one word on one song appears to apply to the whole show.

Is censorship required or not? Will it harm the new venture? Will censorship of the shows harm CCM?

great question radiotimes. we are going through a similar line of questioning with some artist albums that are going to itunes with explicit lyrics. we’ve decided to do two different releases - one with an explicit tag including the song with expletives and one without.

i don’t really like censorship, because where do you stop and start? but labeling things explicit or not, well, that gives people info to decide for themselves?

just my two cents!

~sf

I am very conflicted on this issue. On the one hand I am a parent of 2 young children, and one not so young. I had to take away iTunes access from my younger ones because they were getting snippets of rap, which they loved, but they repeat what they hear.

On the other hand, I am totally in favor of people being able to use language and imagery as they please in art and I’d even say that trying to “clean up” stuff some may find objectionable destroys the integrity and effectiveness of the work involved.

Maybe whole shows should be created for the potentially objectionable material and others should be left clean thereby avoiding tainting the innocent and giving some notoriety for the not so innocent which is always a good ploy for publicity ;-).

I can tell you now that I would not want to be the one making the call as to what is objectionable :-). ccM is not a cohesive artistic endeavor. It’s participants come from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and means of expression. Any censorship for iTunes would limit the exposure of the far reaching nature of the community and make it look far more homogeneous than it is and that, imho, is not good for ccM’s ultimate aims.