In the United States, Standards and Practices (also referred to as Broadcast Standards and Practices or BS&P for short) is the name traditionally given to the department at a television network which is responsible for the moral, ethical, and legal implications of the program that the network airs. Standards and Practices also ensure fairness on televised game shows, in which they are the adjunct to the judges at the production company level. They also have the power to reprimand and recommend the termination of television network stars and employees for violations of standards and practices, performing the same role as that of an organizational ombudsman in other media industries, balancing the needs and requirements of the broadcaster, the creators, the viewing audience, and governmental authority in various federal bureaus.
Examples of intervention The Standards and Practices department of NBC censored one of Jack Paar's jokes on the February 10, 1960, episode of The Tonight Show.
Paar was so very taken aback by the network's decision to censor the joke, he walked off the live show the very next day. As he left his desk in the middle of the program, he said, "I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of, uh, making a living than this." Paar reappeared on March 7, 1960, strolled on stage, struck a pose, and said, "As I was saying before I was interrupted..." After the audience erupted in applause, Paar continued, "When I walked off, I said there must be a better way of making a living. Well, I've looked... and there isn't." He then went on to explain his departure with typical frankness: "Leaving the show was a childish and perhaps emotional thing. I have been guilty of such action in the past and will perhaps be again. I'm totally unable to hide what I feel. It is not an asset in show business, but I shall do the best I can to amuse and entertain you and let other people speak freely, as I have in the past."
During the production of Galactica 1980, Susan Futterman of ABC's broadcast standards department ruled that jokes referencing a fictional food called "Arnie's meatballs" were lewd. Rather than removing the references, executive producer Glen A. Larson incorporated additional references into the two-part episode "The Night the Cylons Landed," multiplying the content the department had sought to restrict. According to story editor Allan Cole, the decision was a direct and deliberate response to the ruling.
In March 1994, ABC's broadcast standards department censored on-air remarks by pediatrician Dr. Jay Gordon on the daytime talk show Home, in which Gordon warned about the marketing of drugs and alcohol to children. The segment was scheduled for the March 9 broadcast. Home executive producer Woody Fraser publicly attributed the decision to commercial rather than editorial considerations: "Susan Futterman never says to you directly it has anything to do with potential sponsor problems, but the Home show is considered to be an advertiser-friendly show. So we sell a lot of spots. We make a lot of money for the network."
Prior to filming the 2007 double-episode "The Gang Gets Whacked" of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the network FX banned the actors from miming snorting cocaine or snorting another substance, but rather would be allowed to place the drug against their gums.
Animation In the late 1970s, ABC created a new position within its broadcast standards department specifically dedicated to children's programming and hired Susan Futterman to fill it — a role the network had not previously had. Among her early decisions were the removal of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons from the network's Saturday morning schedule and the refusal to carry Tom and Jerry, citing excessive violence. Both continued to air on competing networks at high ratings during the same period.
X-Men: The Animated Series was heavily influenced by Fox Kids's BS&P, with characters not allowed to either come into mortal danger (save for Morph's presumed death) or engage in hand-to-hand combat. The CGI series ReBoot was heavily censored by ABC during its two-season run on the network. The network announced the show would be cancelled after its second season after it was purchased by The Walt Disney Company, which would make way for a schedule of all Disney-produced series. The writers wrote scripts for episodes that mocked ABC's S&P department due to it being cancelled, including the insertion of unnoticed profanity within a stream of binary numbers. ReBoot went on to produce another successful season and two made-for-TV movies on other networks which had less strict S&P departments and content standards. Episode 97 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) was unaired in the United States until 2015 due to pressures from Fox Broadcast & Standards (although 4Kids Entertainment leased the time from the network for their FoxBox block and aired the series, it still had to meet Fox's broadcast standards). On the official TMNT website, Lloyd Goldfine states:
The episode finally aired in the United States on August 2, 2015 on Nicktoons after Paramount purchased the rights to the TMNT franchise.
Cartoon Network and its Adult Swim programming block has had various instances of publicly disclosed Standards and Practices encounters:
The final three episodes of the first season of Moral Orel were held back for various amounts of time by Standards and Practices due to being too dark and over the top sexually crude even for Adult Swim, despite regularly originating TV-MA content. Another episode entitled "God's Chef" was delayed for months before the Adult Swim network was able to show it. It has since been released uncensored, along with the rest of Season 1 and part of Season 2, on DVD. Adult Swim programming director Kim Manning revealed in the network's now-defunct online message boards that Adult Swim inquired into airing Elfen Lied in April 2006, but was rejected by its Standards and Practices department because the series contained graphic violence and nudity. The only way the department would approve its airing was to have it extensively edited, so the network ultimately decided not to broadcast at the expense of altering the original work at such a level. Manning stated in the same post that this was also the case with Gantz. In 2014, according to Rebecca Sugar, the creator of Steven Universe, Cartoon Network Standards and Practices Department informed her that Ruby and Sapphire, who fused together as Garnet, couldn't "kiss on the mouth." Even though, after March 2015, following the release of "Jail Break", fans picked up on the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire, and Pearl's love for Rose Quartz, the show's crew were prohibited from confirming these relationships. Sugar noted that, when she pitched the episode that would become "Reunited" in 2015, she was told that the International Standards and Practices Department of Cartoon Network might object to language about Garnet, and she pushed back more after Ian Jones-Quartey proposed to her. Sugar also noted that a signing card she would give out at San Diego Comic-Con in 2015 was deemed "too romantic", because some at Cartoon Network might become "upset" with the direction of the show. She also noted that after the September 2016 publication of The Answer, a children's book adaptation of the episode "The Answer", she was brought into a meeting and "asked to explain herself", noting that she would, in meetings like this, defend the show's stories and "audience of queer youth".
In June 2021, Abbey White of Insider argued that one of the reasons that children's animation were stymied in their attempts to be more inclusive for decades was due to Standards and Practices departments within networks, the latter which interpreted rating guidelines and definitions of profanity, indecency, and obscenity by the FCC, to guide their notes to crew working on various animated series. One former Cartoon Network executive quoted in the story, Katie Krentz, told the publication that these departments have "wide-ranging content guidelines" on hand, which regulate just about everything, "from characters' technology use to their diet." White noted that these departments, as do studio executives, determine whether words such as "pride" or "gay," or other LGBTQ terms, can be shown on onscreen or said by a character. According to White, this included an unnamed Cartoon Network series in the mid-2010s where writers had to refer to a character's same-gender parents singularly as "Mom" rather than "Moms." Even so, the story said that while these departments have a huge sway, the conservative pushback to certain shows have led to the removal of content, and said that top executives have the power to make changes to increase inclusion. Although streaming companies do not have such departments, Krentz argued that, as a result, decisions about LGBT representation in a show falls on the "belief system and background" of a single person, putting pressure on creative executives.
Game show incidents
Resulting from the 1950s quiz show scandals, game shows have been closely monitored by network standards and practices departments for possible irregularities. Subsequent to the quiz show scandals, a detailed document is prepared for each show by the show's producers, which sets forth the exact rules of the game. This document is referred to as the "bible". The bible is then used as the definitive authority regarding game play. The contestant release form, which is executed by all contestants, contains language to the effect that decisions of the producer shall be final.
When an irregularity occurs, the most common remedy is to permit the contestant to appear and play the game again at a later date. Disclaimers are also a regular part of a closing credits roll, stating that dead portions of the game which had no ramifications were edited for time to meet final cut, and points/money are added/subtracted for a successful appeal of the correctness of an answer.
The Price Is Right On rare occasions, contestants who have lost games because of procedural irregularities have been awarded the prizes. Irregularities have occurred when either the prize descriptions or prices displayed for the item in question have been incorrect, mechanical errors/malfunctions with certain pricing game props, or administrative errors by models, announcer, or the host (such as a misheard bid, models not doing what the contestant requested, or announcing the price of a prize when it was not supposed to be there). When such an error occurs, the contestant is awarded any prizes in question. If the error is discovered before the ensuing Showcase Showdown (on hour shows prior to 2024) or the conclusion of the sixth pricing game (since 2024 because of a procedural change where both Showcase Showdowns are recorded after the sixth pricing game), the host informs the contestant upon returning from commercial or before the Showdown, and the contestant is re-seeded for the Showcase Showdown based on the additional winnings. If the error is discovered after the ensuing Showcase Showdown or in post-production, either a disclaimer appears or is read by the announcer during the closing credits of the show.