The first time I remember frontal nudity in a made for TV project was 'Roots' in the mid 70s. I'm watching Hawaii as I right these words han have just passed the part where the Hawaiians are rowing out to the ship greeting the missionaries. For what reason did they find it necessary to 'blurr' the images of the natives??
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I have read that it has to do with underage nudity. Some of the Hawaiian actresses in the film were apparently underage, including the girl who is given to Abner and Jarusa. When Turner Classic Movies showed the film recently the toplessness was not blurred, but it was otherwise the shorter version of the film missing 30 of its original minutes. The blurring must have been a choice by PBS.
I saw it last week on TCM too, and you're right, the nudity was not blurred. I was a little surprised, to be honest, but the scenes were so short, and shot from a distance, that at first I wasn't sure what I was seeing.
PBS being public broadcasting and TCM being a cable network may have had something to do with the blurring on the former.
One of the over-the-air broadcast channels showed HAWAII in the last week or so, and it was broadcast in uncompressed HI-DEF. The Hawaiian scenery was beautiful! (Maybe the local Antenna TV channel?)
According to one of the very recent threads on this board, a Blu-Ray version of the 161 minute (cut) version, and the standard-def (DVD) of the longer roadshow version will be available in mid-January of 2016, so I guess that could be the source of the over-the-air broadcast. Plus it is a teaser for the upcoming release.
However, the usual "edited to run in the time alloted, and for content" applied to the air broadcast version, so there was some "chopiness" scattered through that broadcast, even though it was shown on very late night TV. And you can easily guess what parts probably got most of the "content" cuts.
That said, I am surprised so many comments have been made about the "shocking nudity"...
Didn't anyone else see Marlon Brando's MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY(1962)?
When the Bounty arrived in Tahiti, the natives also swam out to the ship, and some of the unmarried women also climbed up onto the ship, disgusting Captain Bleigh and delighting the crewmen.
(Q: How does one know they were unmarried? A: The married women wore tops, and the unmarried women did not! The islanders did not have wedding rings... **smile**)