This Weekend, AT&T’s Blue Room Will Work Blue

After controversy erupted when an “outside vendor” censored some anti-Bush statements from the AT&T Blue Room broadcast of Pearl Jam’s Lollapalooza set, This weekend, the Blue Room is streaming the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and this time out, the company will leave audio from the shows unbleeped, for the most part:

“One of the big takeaways from the Lollapalooza situation was that we needed to re-evaluate and review the policy,” said Tiffany O’Brien Nels, AT&T’s Austin, Texas-based spokeswoman. “As such, AT&T’s Blue Room has adopted a new policy with respect to live Webcasted performances, and that is that we’re not going to do any audio editing for any reason. We’re letting it rip, as the saying goes.

“We do reserve the right to edit the video feed,” O’Brien Nels added. “But we will only do that either through camera angles or video blackouts for excessive sexual content — nudity or simulated sex acts. Because the site is not 18 and over and we do believe we still have some obligation to the younger audience, you will now see strong viewer discretion messaging before and during the Webcast.”

Fair enough, although I’d be happier if they said that they were also dropping out the audio on the Ghostland Observatory set because of excessive crimes against aesthetic taste. (Seriously, what the hell is the draw of that band? They sound like everything that’s annoying about going to college.)

‘We’re letting it rip’–Webcast won’t edit audio [Chicago Sun-Times]