This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Media
Sweary Red Hot Chili Peppers no good for breakfast, OfCom tells Kerrang! Radio
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 4 December 2013
Kerrang! Radio has been found to have breached OfCom rules when it played an unedited version of ‘Suck My Kiss’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers on its breakfast show earlier this year. Unsurprisingly, themedia regulator thought that four instances of the word “motherfucker” was a bit much for a Saturday morning.
The station’s owner Bauer Media seemed to blame the incident on the operational changes that occurred in its radio business after its acquisition of Planet Rock and the shift of the Kerrang! Radio studios from Birmingham to London.
The offending track was in a system Bauer had acquired, the media firm said, and while a staff member had spotted that the recording was not daytime radio friendly during the integration and had removed the song, it had then been copied back from the trash folder by mistake. This “technical error” caused the sweary version to be played.
Bauer added that presenter links either side of the song had been pre-recorded, so no one was on-site to spot the error and stop the track playing, or to immediately apologise, but added that an apology had been broadcast the following Saturday at around the same time the track had gone out.
In its ruling, OfCom said that it had taken into account steps taken by Bauer to improve its compliance to the rules, but that it still had to find the station in breach because of, you know, all the swearing. Also, it noted that a similar breach had occurred in April of this year.
