Major events involving the censorship of music
- 1927- The Radio Act grants federal officials the power to suspend the licenses of radio operators and personalities who "[have] transmitted ... radio communications containing profane or obscene words or language." This legislation sets the precedent for future federal radio censorship.
- 1934- Congress creates the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversees regulation of publicly-owned broadcast frequencies.
- 1936- George Formby's "When I'm Cleaning Windows" is released, but soon banned by BBC Radio for objectionable lyrics
- 1956- Elvis Presley appears twice on The Ed Sullivan Show, and—contrary to the urban legend—his scandalous hip gyrations aren't censored. It isn't until his third appearance, in January 1957, that CBS censors decide to film him only from the waist up.
- 1958- The mutual Broadcasting System drops all rock and roll records from its network music programs, calling it “distorted, monotonous, noisy music.”
- 1972- After comedian George Carlin preformed his show the FCC formally created "indecency regulation" for the radio
- 1973- In a major happening, the Supreme Court granted the power to local communities to ban music that they felt was obscene and was influencing the youth.
- 1985- Tipper Gore and Susan Baker form the Parents Music Recourse Center (PMRC) to monitor and ban objectionable music.
- The PRRC had the mission of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to be violent, have drug use or be sexual via labeling albums with Parental Advisory stickers.
- 1985- Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC).
- PMRC came up with the "filthy Fifteen", a list of the top 15 songs that were recommended to be banned
- 1986- Frank Zappa discusses music censorship on the TV debate program "Crossfire"
- 2001- Several radio stations ban more than 150 songs that they feel contained lyrics that propagated violence
- 2004- A Wal-Mart was sued by customers who bought an Evanescence CD that was not labeled for parental advisory and contained the F-word. After that Wal-Mart stopped selling all expletive records.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freespeech/tp/History-of-Music-Censorship-Timeline.htm
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/music-censorship-timeline.html
http://www.censorshipinamerica.com/2010/09/timeline-of-music-censorship-in-the-united-states.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_Advisory
http://ncac.org/update/selected-music-censorship-incidents-1999-2005/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freespeech/tp/History-of-Music-Censorship-Timeline.htm
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/music-censorship-timeline.html
http://www.censorshipinamerica.com/2010/09/timeline-of-music-censorship-in-the-united-states.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_Advisory
http://ncac.org/update/selected-music-censorship-incidents-1999-2005/