Figures from official ratings agency Barb show Talking Pictures TV, which claims to be the biggest independent channel in the country, had an audience of around 3.3m in March. Rewind TV attracted 1.4m viewers, while That’s TV pulled in 3.7m.

‘Good, clean fun’

Despite their popularity, these channels have often found themselves at loggerheads with Ofcom. While the regulator does not have a blacklist of banned words and phrases, it issues guidelines on offensive material based on a public survey carried out every five years.

Ofcom uses these findings to assign language to one of three categories: mild, moderate and strong.

Words that fall into the first category are considered unlikely to trouble audiences, while moderate language has a greater potential for offence. Words ranked “strong” are perceived to be highly offensive and require a “clear and strong contextual justification for broadcast”.

Rather than acting as an outright censor, Ofcom gives guidance on how broadcasters should approach language then leaves them to make the decisions. If audiences are unhappy, they are entitled to complain to the regulator, as on occasion they have.

For some TV bosses, however, the rules are overly prescriptive. Critics argue that the ever-evolving nature of language and social norms means channels are being held to an arbitrary and constantly shifting set of standards.

Ofcom’s latest guidance, published in 2021, ranks “whore” as moderate language, whereas the Americanised equivalent “ho” is deemed mild. Following 2016’s survey, “bloody” was considered mild language. As of 2021, however, it has been upgraded to moderate.

Other words such as “queer” split opinions among survey respondents. It has been used in the past in a derogatory way but has now been adopted in the acronym LGBTQ+.

“T--ser”, “slut” and “t--t” are among the words that have been cleaved out of classics including Carry On Laughing (a TV compilation of clips from the film series), Please Sir!, On The Buses and Whose Line is it Anyway?.

“It’s a little bit arbitrary, to be perfectly honest,” says Moore. “Offence is partly in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? One person’s offensive word might be another person’s completely acceptable word.”

Broadcasting bosses agree that some topics, such as outright racism or homophobia, are beyond the pale.

“There is some stuff that’s just not funny any more,” says Cronin-Stanley. “If you’re going to watch a film from 1958 you’re going to hear language from 1958. But if it is so outrageously rude, we’ll take it out.”

Other elements are more nuanced, especially in light of their context. Films such as the 1959 crime drama Sapphire contain racist language precisely because it is a critical study of racist attitudes in London at the time.

In the world of comedy, meanwhile, the offending characters are often being sent up for their unsavoury views, or will ultimately get their comeuppance as a result of them.

Robert Ross, an author and comedy historian, says: “No producer, no actor, no writer of that generation of comedy set out to be malicious or offend on purpose. It was all for good, clean fun.”

Ofcom says it is not a censor and takes context into account when considering complaints.

Cronin-Stanley insists that after almost a decade of broadcasting, her channel has found a “happy medium” to stay within the regulator’s rules, though she says any move to edit programmes sparks an angry response from viewers.

Free speech fears

Others are less sanguine. Moore argues that Ofcom’s approach means classic programming is at risk of being cut beyond all recognition as broadcasters self-censor, warning that this could ultimately lead to extinction.

“The last thing we want is a whopping great big fine coming in the post because we’ve let something slip,” he says. “So we’re very aware and very nervous about that and we probably do go a bit further than we should, maybe, because of that fear.”

Critics point to similar examples in the publishing industry where the works of children’s authors such as Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl were revised to avoid causing offence. Blyton’s Famous Five books were subsequently reverted to their original language after the edits flopped.