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Updated: Nine pulls “Bloody Mary” South Park episode

UPDATED: Channel Nine has pulled the controversial "Bloody Mary" episode of South Park from GO! following today's lead story on TV Tonight.

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UPDATED: Nine has this afternoon pulled a controversial “Bloody Mary” South Park episode from GO! following a story today on TV Tonight.

The episode was due to air next Tuesday night.

It will now replace the episode with “Christian Hard Rock” -which is exactly the same episode SBS put in its place when it dropped the episode.

Nine Programming presumably had no insight into the content of the episode or has buckled under pressure following today’s story,

Nine is yet to provide comment to enquiries from TV Tonight.

Today’s story ran as follows:

Next week GO! will air the highly controversial “Bloody Mary” episode of South Park.

SBS bowed to pressure and opted not to air this in 2006, after it caused outrage in the US.

The episode includes scenes of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding “out its ass”, lelading to protests to Comedy Central which dropped it from its repeats.

Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart wrote to SBS asking the broadcaster not to air the episode. It bowed to pressure and withheld it from airing. The episode has since screened on the Comedy Channel.

It also aired in New Zealand on C4 despite Prime Minister Helen Clark issuing a statement saying the episode sounded “revolting.” After howls of complaints C4 later apologised for offending viewers.

The “Bloody Mary” episode will air at 10:30 Tuesday May 25 on GO! rated MA.

This week GO! was found to have breached the Code of Practice for an episode of Dante’s Cove, while another complaint is under review.

57 Responses

  1. I don’t have go in our family home but some people love this show.I used to watch regularly when it was the only thing in it’s time slot that was not a boring current affairs program, crime show or something aimed mainly at women on a Monday Night.

    Does anyone here remember Doug Mulray And Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos that was worse and kerry packer yanked that off the air within the first hour.I wonder what james packer would think of this southpark.

  2. Nathan – I don’t think we should be called losers (or whatever your word was before it was censored).

    TV viewers should always have the choice of watching a television programme in order of its correct airing. Skipping episodes or moving them about happens all too often, not only with South Park but with other shows.

    We shouldn’t need to buy the DVD (or resort to other means) in order to have a programme seen in its correct order/at all. Nine/Go! has simply dudded us.

  4. They probably didn’t want an aftermath. They want to say No before they put it on and have people like Father ‘Bob Ma quire’ saying stuff about them and how they didn’t see what SBS did. I mean SBS still airs the show, so maybe they could bring it back?

  5. @bogan pride. Who was apologizing? The only apology I recall was Daryl Summers for the show putting the international guest judge in that awkward position that (in this YouTube age of ours) could have ended pretty badly. Issue resolved.

    Why does this have to with the adult cartoon South Park? In a secular country like Australia, shouldn’t adults have the right to chose whether or not they want to see the episode?

  7. @ steve.
    Well i haven’t seen anything unsuitable for families on hey hey. The out rage over the black faces skit on hey hey was So embarrassing for Australians. Most Australian left winged, say sorry for everything and to everyone loonies, couldn’t apologise enough for the hey hey skit.
    So which is worse, Bowing to pressure from some religious groups. Or kissing the a*se and succumbing to a few self righteous American entertainers? I for one know which one brought more shame onto Australia and Australians.

  8. If people watch South Park and are offended it’s their own stupid fault. It’s not like they haven’t been controversial before. I watch every now and again and it always offends me in the most delightful way, lol.

  10. @bogan pride, well actually no. Trey and Matt didn’t s**t themselves as you put it. And the didn’t censore the episode. It was comedy central who decided to censor the images of mohammed.

    It was even said on the south park website that they could not get the permission from comedy central to re-show the episode uncensored on their website.

  13. In the US they censored a new SP episode for fear of Muslim reactionary violence, in Australia we drop an old episode of SP for fear of Christian criticism. We’re world class alright – world class cowards.

  14. @David knox.
    True it was comedy central who pulled the show. They didn’t just censor it. It was the creators who censored it. First they had Mohammed, When that news got out, they portrayed him as a bear. Still wasn’t good enough. So they blacked him out. Which as you know, still didn’t meet the muslims standards. So they pulled the show. I know south park has made fun of jews, muslims and gays. But when it is done. It shows the person making those jokes or assumptions about those groups as backwards and arrogant.

  16. Sort of funny. How ppl are getting on their moral high horse. Saying that go shouldn’t bow to to pressure, and air the episode. I wonder how many of those same people, were on here complaining about the red faces, black face skit. Or if a comedy was to make fun of gays or another group?
    True ant. If this was something that was insulting to jews, these same defenders of free speech would be crying foul. Poor old Catholics get called intolerant and oppressive. The most they do when something insults their faith is make a few calls to the tv stations. Look what happened when south park was going to put Mohammad in their show. Their creators near on s**t themselves when the death threats started rolling in. If they want to stand up like heros telling the world they want to make fun of people beliefs, and they don’t care who it offends. Then they should make fun of them all. Not just ones who don’t go all crazy a*se on them.

    1. This comment doesn’t make sense. South Park has maligned numerous religions and cultures (incl. Jewish, gay, African-American, Latino) as part of its “comedy of the offence.” It was Comedy Central that censored Mohammed episode not the creators. Nine / GO! has not yet indicated it actually bowed to any pressure, but it has withdrawn the ep.

  23. bet they wouldn’t have even realised if it wasn’t pointed out to them, no one at tv channels actually watches the shows they put to air. The ads 10 makes for shows clearly illustrate this by focusing on a tiny part of the episode that has nothing to do with the main plot. That goes doubly for the digital channels, they just chuck any old thing on and never bother to watch them, much less cut ads for individual episodes.

  24. Here are the contact numbers for Channel Nine. If people really want Go! to air the episode, the best way is to tell them directly…

    Channel Nine Sydney (02) 9906-9999
    Channel Nine Melbourne (03) 9420-3111
    Channel Nine Brisbane (07) 3214-9999
    Channel Nine Adelaide (08) 8267 0111
    Channel Nine Perth (08) 9449 9999

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