E! Entertainment explains the channel's idiosyncratic approach of blurring, blocking and bleeping as seen in South Africa on DStv.

E! Entertainment (DStv 124) is responding to South African viewers' big ongoing concerns and viewing irritation, and explaining the American general entertainment and entertainment news channel's erratic and idiosyncratic blurring, blocking and daft censorship approach.

E! Entertainment's response comes after South African viewers are getting fed up with E! Entertainment's erratic scheduling and "total mad mess" regarding scheduling, bleeping and blurring as well as inconsistencies in dealing with language and commercial  references on the channel.

So disruptive has the censorship on E! Entertainment become that South African viewers are starting to tune out of E! and to other channels, saying they no longer enjoy the constantly censored entertainment channel.

NBCUniversal in London which runs the adapted E! Entertainment feed seen on MultiChoice's DStv platform in South Africa says the answer to viewers' question and confusion "is not straighforward".

"The E! content is US produced and the international E! channel broadcasts on a feed that is pan-regional," says NBCUniversal. "The result is the that regulatory compliance of the content as broadcast internationally has to go through a number of jurisdictions' regulatory rules."

"The content has to be blurred or bleeped for language, nudity and/or commercial references based on the strictest applicable code in each of the channel's markets. This means that some references that would otherwise be acceptable in a particular market may in any event be masked in some way due to codes operating in another market to which the feed is broadcast."

"We do regularly review our ability to create independent feeds for particular markets but current constraints mean that we have a pan-regional model for this channel," says NBCUniversal.

"With regard to the apparent inconsistency in dealing with bad language within programmes; this will vary depending on when that programme was originally scheduled."

"A programme that was first transmitted during the day, when children may be watching, would have any swearing edited or bleeped out while the same programme may include swearing if it was originally scheduled for evening transmission."

"We regret that these overlapping regulatory obligations can sometimes appear inconsistent and/or disrupt the editorial flow of some programmes on E!, but hopefully this information helps at least to explain why it can happen."

"E! very much appreciates viewer feedback from different territories as this allows us to review our current transmission arrangements and improve out service," says NBCUniversal.