Oops! BET's "cleaned-up" version of "The Wire" has unbleeped captions

I wondered how my favorite show of all time and newly minted TCA Heritage Award winner "The Wire" would fare in its translation from pay cable to basic. Well, right now I'm watching BET, and it's airing an episode from the first season, and I have the sound off and captions on ... and as you will see below (warning!), it's almost exactly like watching "The Wire" the first time around. That's because somebody at HBO or BET dropped the ball and just plum forgot to fix the captioning, which from what I can tell has been left with its F-bombs and MF-bombs and CSMF-bombs and all that stuff intact. 

Blame BET until you hear otherwise. Since that channel is cheaper than Ralph Nader shopping at a resale store, my guess is that no one working there actually deals with captions. Think about it. If you're ordering up a new program, you outsource the captions. If you're buying an old program, the finished captions come with it. And it would take someone who actually works at BET to think hey, wait a minute ... that show we just acquired has R-rated captions!

Here's a frame grab. 

There's much more where tha came from. Personally, I couldn't care less who sees these captions. And I can't imagine why anyone would want to bust BET for being anything but a lame cable channel.  "The Wire" airs in late nights with a TV-MA warning, and most kids don't use captions, because they think that's for Grandma, and anyway, it's hard to imagine anyone's tender little souls corrupted for the very first time by "The Wire" — by the time you can appreciate a show like that, you had to have been around the block a few times.

BET won't get in trouble since it's on cable and the Supreme Court has severely restricted the FCC's ability to levy fines or sanctions against cable networks for indecency. Still, my guess is someone at BET is going to hear about this. Unless their job's been outsourced.

Comments

[Bob in Jersey]

Strange...being this came from HBO, who've already cleaned up The Sopranos and Sex and the City, wouldn't this fall on them?

[Steve]

Have you noticed all of the commercials for the "flirt by text" services? Thank goodness for Tivo's 30-second skip.