I noticed something whilst watching The Almost Impossible Gameshow yesterday, a show currently going out at 9pm on ITV2. They bleeped out the swearing for the first part of the show and left it untouched for the rest. I wondered if this was a stylistic thing. Swearing’s not something I’m offended by particularly, I think there’s a time and a place but if that time and place isn’t after suddenly falling down a slippery hill then I don’t know what it is, and as an immediate expression of honesty it’s difficult to beat.

Nope, it sounds like ITV and C4 work with a 9:15pm “fuck” watershed, the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever heard.

Twitter suggests that it’s because of Section 1.6 of the OFCOM Broadcasting Code:

1.6 The transition to more adult material must not be unduly abrupt at the watershed (in the case of television) or after the time when children are particularly likely to be listening (in the case of radio). For television, the strongest material should appear later in the schedule.

I thought the idea was that if you started a show before the 9pm watershed you couldn’t suddenly change tack as soon as 9pm came round – you know what you’re expecting. It sounds like this is not quite the case. I remain baffled by the idea of inconsistency during the same show. How is this protecting if they’re just going to be shocked later if they keep watching?

A few people have bought up that C5 got into trouble for excessive swearing on Big Brother immediately after the 9pm watershed, that was in 2011. On Celebrity Big Brother this year they were broadcasting what’s considered a much ruder word barely after 9pm (I remember remarking if it was the earliest in the evening it had been broadcast on television) and nobody seemed especially bothered.

Although as one wag puts it:

This has taken me by surprise a bit – the line-up for series two is already well known but we were aware they were filming two series at once, although we didn’t think they’d shoot the studio stuff at the same time as series two (I thought there were a lot of recording sessions).

@BothersBar don’t know if s3 lineup is news? pic.twitter.com/vaAHZPNTvK

— Tom Flynn (@whattheflynn) April 15, 2016

Good line-up, probably the most Dave-friendly of the three. Series two is set to go out in the Summer, I would presume series three won’t go out immediately afterwards but you probably won’t have to wait until next Summer either.

We’re hearing from a couple of sources that contestants are being sought for a second series of Rebound.

Rebound was the first show in the The Chase Summer Replacement Slot for ages to not do completely awfully (beating out Freeze Out, Gift Wrapped, The 21st Question and C21 Format Of The Year Take On The Twisters), holding and even slightly growing its audience in the slot that only Tipping Point had managed in the past.

We don’t have any real details as yet, we don’t know if it’s going to have a second go in the slot this Summer or whether its future lies elsewhere. The first series was a good fun quickfire quiz and hopefully the last year will have given it a chance to iron out some bumps.

We know we have Alphabetical to look forward to in the afternoons at some point which we’re presuming is a Summer replacement, we don’t know what’s going on with Scrabble.

Not much in the way of anything I can bring myself to be bothered to write about, but there are some shows coming up in the next week you might find interesting:

• American Grit – This is going out on Fox in the US on Thursday, so you’ll have to find dark means to watch it, but it sounds very much like our sort of thing, effectively it’s Million Dollar Ultimate Hell Week With John Cena whom you may remember from non-hit Die Hard 3 rip-off inspired 12 Rounds (not that bad but the sequel with Randy Orton is better).
• Bang On The Money – teams attempt to hit numerical targets bang on in a party atmosphere with DJs Rickie and Melvin. Has there ever been a TV show that proclaimed to have a party atmosphere that you’d actually like to go to? Me neither. Still, I hope the challenges are good. There’s £40k on the line. That’s on ITV on Saturday at 7pm, there will be a Show Discussion post.
• The Code – Players answer questions to try and crack a safe with Matt Allwright with Lesley-Anne Brewis in Richard Osman capacity. One of the interesting things is that the teams are of variable sizes. Good quiz credentials promised. That’s weekdaily from Monday, 2:15pm on BBC1, there will be a show discussion post.