The partially exposed breast of US pop singer Janet Jackson, which fed through to Jamaican viewers during a half-time show at a Super Bowl football game, has renewed calls for local television stations to install equipment to filter out unsuitable audio and visual material during live events.

“The incident underscores the question of having delay mechanisms for local broadcasters,” executive director of the Broadcast Commission, Cordel Green, told to the Observer. “Some arrangement must be put in place to enable the broadcaster to cut, bleep out or blur out material not appropriate for air if they are going to broadcast live material.”

TV stations are only expected to have the hardware if they are going to show live feeds, where persons will speak and act unscripted. The Broadcast Commission first made the call for the equipment to be installed two years ago, the same year it finalised the revised children’s code of conduct.

Neither TVJ nor CVM carried the Super Bowl game this year, saving them from any sanctions by the Commission. According to Green, the Janet Jackson incident would have violated the children’s code.

“Technically it would (have been) a breach,” he said, adding that the maximum possible sanction under law would be the suspension of a licence.

The Super Bowl was broadcast on cable stations across the island but the Broadcast Commission said it had received no complaints from local viewers. This was a signal, Green said, that “the public understood that the feed was independent of the cable stations”.

Cable stations, he added, are not obliged to filter such material. They are only obliged to give subscribers the choice to avoid adult and X-rated channels, but CBS is rated as a family station.

Meanwhile, television stations are making preparations to comply with the Commission’s urgings but complain that the equipment is pricey. The editing hardware cost between US$30,000 to US$100,000 according to CVM.

“But CVM is looking at in the US$30,000 range,” said the station’s head of engineering, Leslie Campbell. “We expect to put the equipment in place in 18 months.”

CVM’s rival, TVJ, is also preparing to buy the equipment for its new multi-million dollar complex on Lyndhurst Road in Kingston. The studio should open next month.

“The equipment cost US$9,000 but that does not include shipping, duty and insurance which would make the price a lot more,” said RJR’s group engineering manager, Carrol Lawrence. “We intend to have it in the new studio shortly.”

Jamaican radio stations, the vehicles for a significant number of interactive call-in programmes which increase the chance of profanity, already have similar hardware in place.

The hardware that television stations would use allows the producer to visually preview a live feed, by setting a desired time delay. During the preview the producer can dump material which is inappropriate and synchronise audio and visual settings prior to the dumping, so there is little evidence of a cut. The larger the delay, the more visual editing that can be done. US television stations did not have enough time delay to visually edit Jackson’s Super Bowl snafu.

During the Super Bowl half-time-show, Jackson and pop singer Justin Timberlake ended a spirited number with Timberlake pulling a portion of Jackson’s dress to reveal her exposed breast with a small sticker over the nipple. According to MTV, the producers of the half-time show, Timberlake was scripted to pull the dress, but it was to reveal a red lacy covering underneath. CBS, which broadcast the show, MTV, Timberlake and Jackson all issued separate apologies, but the FCC and US broadcasting regulators are investigating the matter. The worst case scenario is that CBS and its scores of affiliates could each be fined about US$27,000.