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'Mr. Robot' latest episode which aired same night as 'Suits' latest episode on USA had full on F-bombs being dropped and a scene of a woman masturbating to cybersex (the ultimate *beep*
USA Network has no obligation to the FCC to be censored since it is a cable channel.
Suits voluntarily censors itself from using such extreme profanity in order to curate a larger viewing audience.
Typical 'Suits' dialog:
"Pull your goddamn head out of your goddamn ass goddamn it. By the way, goddamn, you better win this goddamn case! *beep*
Because the federal government likes censoring anything they can.
shareMaybe the Suits characters could start using "bugger" or "buggered" since I think it's the same thing as the F-word in British English.
Dr Jason Bull: Don't give up on people, they're all we've got.
It might slip by a lot of Americans, but it's possible that "bugger" might be held more offensive than the F-bomb, being a sodomy reference.
I haven't got a set of subtitles on hand, but I'm sure they must have used "screw you" and "we're screwed", though.
Most Americans are stupid and uncultured, so they would not get the reference. I understand "trump" means passing gas...so Trump...Trumpers...never mind.
shareThe FCC statutes only apply to broadcast TV (and the profanity statutes apply from 6am to 10pm.) They could still air swearing during the prohibited hours, but they would have to pay enormous fines if the FCC received any complaints. The FCC doesn't monitor broadcast TV dialogue, it's all complaint-based.
Suits and a lot of other cable shows probably avoid the F-bomb because they think it might lose advertisers more than other words, or the sponsors may have specified words that invalidate their advertising contracts.
Mr. Robot airs at 10pm in the eastern time zone (which apparently holds about half of the US population), so I'm guessing advertisers perhaps are more willing to take chances with the most offensive words, even though it airs earlier in other zones.
Because the US was started by Puritans and like it or not, they are still with us today.