
Song Calling UK Leader “Liar” Hits Top 10; Radio Stations Won't Play - owens99
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/theresa-may-liar-liar-song-tenth-place-captain-ska-big-top-40-download-chart-a7761091.html
======
tomtoise
This happened in the past, a lot of people bought the track 'Ding Dong the
Witch is Dead' from the Wizard of Oz movie in the week Margaret Thatcher died,
BBC refused to play it despite it hitting number one.

It does raise interesting discussion points about the role of places like the
Beeb in censoring what is essentially a list of the 'most popular' tracks in a
given week.

Luckily this specific case is a little more clear-cut, stations can just
invoke impartiality rules due to the General Election being so close and get
around having to play the track.

~~~
yrro
IIRC they played a sample of it but not the entire thing. And they didn't
conceal that it was number one in the charts, so I think describing the
incident as "censorship" is going a bit far.

IME the BBC always goes easy on whoever is in power (or, near the time of an
election, the presumptive winner)... this is quite natural since ultimately
the government is in control of the organization.

~~~
DarkKomunalec
"The Big Top 40 show on Capital FM and Heart opted not to play the song"

But in this case it's not the BBC refusing to play it... is it? I'm not too
familiar with British radio stations, so those might well be BBC's
subsidiaries.

Anyway, "this is quite natural" \- I don't think the criticism was that it's
unnatural, just ethically suspect.

~~~
tomtoise
Capital and Heart are privately owned and operated stations. The BBC Charts
usually air on Radio 1 I think on Friday, so we will have to see if they opt
to play it then, though I strongly suspect they will not.

------
ewanm89
We have very strong regulations about political advertising in run up to
elections in this country, such a track could easily fall under such
regulation. I doubt any major organisation wants to take the risk.

