Wow! Just wow...

While viewers in Raleigh can decide which show they want to watch on TV, WRAL likes to decide what the viewer hears. or does not hear. 

While SNL was airing on WRAL at damn near midnight, viewers continued to hear the audio drop out during the broadcast.

Was NBC censoring guest host Dave Chappelle and the cast?

Why would NBC do that?

Well, NBC didn't do it, but WRAL did.

WRAL GM Steve Hammel confirmed that the censoring was intentional and according to their “obscenity, decency and profanity” policy.

In a statement, Hammel said: 

“WRAL-TV has a station obscenity, decency and profanity policy that outlines 10 specific words that will not be broadcast on our air. This policy is based on our own standards in combination with FCC guidelines. Our broadcast operators have a 10-second delay button they can choose to use. During Saturday Night Live on NBC, guest host Dave Chappell used 2 of those words on 9 different occasions and they were silenced. Obviously, SNL is a live show so we had no prior indication about what would be said during the broadcast. We understand this caused disruption during the program. We wanted our audience to know this was a station decision, not the network's, and why we made that choice.”

Viewers in other markets – from Philadelphia, Dallas, New York and Greenville, N.C. – reported on Twitter that their broadcasts were not interrupted.

The outages occurred repeatedly during Chappelle’s monologue and again during a digital short in which Chappelle spoofed a well known scene from the TV show “The Walking Dead,” in which he threatened characters from his old “Chappelle’s Show” (all characters played by Chappelle) with a baseball bat. The outages also occurred during a later sketch featuring Chappelle. 

Later Sunday, Hammel elaborated on the station’s decision to censor portions of the show and promised to review the policy:

"We apologize for impeding the full flow and message of Dave Chappelle's monologue. It was not our intention to censor his message. We followed policies and procedures that have been in place for many years for programming of any kind.This is an opportunity for us to review those policies and procedures. We will, and will consider viewer input as we do that."

It's 2016 Steve, let the people decide what they want to hear. 

H/T News Observer