BBC receives complaints over Live 8 swearing

The BBC has received hundreds of complaints, after several artists swore during the station’s live broadcast of the Live 8 concerts.

Madonna, US rap star Snoop Dogg and Johnny Borrell, frontman of British band, Razorlight, who were performing at the Hyde Park concert, all used the f-word before the 9pm watershed. Billie-Joe Armstrong, lead singer of US punk rockers Green Day, was also heard to swear in a clip of their performance from the Berlin Live 8 concert.

The BBC said that it had received over 350 complaints regarding the swearing and has apologised for any offence caused. A spokesperson said that performers had been told to watch their language, because it was a live broadcast. However, as time delays were not used, it was impossible to prevent any editing of performers who swore during the broadcast.

The Live 8 event on Saturday was an unprecedented success. Around 205,000 people watched the concert in Hyde Park, London, which featured a number of major artists, including U2, Coldplay, Robbie Williams, Sir Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd, who performed live with founder member Roger Waters for the first time since 1981. Nine other concerts took place in cities across the world at the same time, including Philadelphia, Rome, Moscow, Paris and Berlin.

Viewers were able to watch the concerts on television and via the Internet. It was estimated that 85% of the world’s population would have been able to see Live 8. It has already been reported that the response to the Internet broadcast, which allowed viewers to watch live streams of the various concerts, registered the highest response ever to an online event. AOL-com, which streamed the footage, reportedly said that more than five million people had logged on to the site to watch the footage throughout the day.

The event also broke the record for the amount of text messages received for a single event. 26.4 million texts were received after people were urged to text their name and support the campaign. The names were then featured on scrolls on the screens at the concerts themselves.

The opening track from the Hyde Park concert – Sir Paul McCartney and U2 collaborating on the Beatles’ famous ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, a song that Sir Paul had never performed live – was available as download shortly after the performance at the concert. All the proceeds made from the download will go to Live 8.

(KMcA/MB)