Publications
Partners
Cape Town – Days after Amazon Prime Video became available in a further 200 countries the subscription video-on-demand (VOD) service has started the censorship of its own content – cutting down an episode of Jeremy Clarkson’s new motoring show The Grand Tour in India because it shows him driving a “beef car”.
Amazon Prime Video is also censoring its other content in India.
While censorship of TV content on Amazon Prime Video hasn’t yet been spotted or reported in its available offering in South Africa and the 35 African countries where the service is now available since last week, upset Indian viewers have revealed that Amazon Prime Video employs censorship to give users a gutted viewing experience where the global giant deems it necessary.
Indian news outlets like NDTV and Mashable over the weekend reported that Amazon Prime Video decided to censor the fourth episode of the former Top Gear on BBC presenter Jeremy Clarkson’s new car show The Grand Tour because he’s driving around in a vehicle with a windshield made of a cow’s body organs.
Cows are revered creatures in India. Amazon Prime Video censored a whopping 32 minutes of the Amazon Originals production, culling the 62-minute episode down to just 30 minutes if the specific episode is watched by anyone in India.
In a terse statement Amazon admitted that it heavily censored the episode and said “we will keep Indian cultural sensitivities in mind while offering this content to customers”.
Amazon says it gives customers in India “the choice on what to watch. Amazon is a responsible company and we are here to entertain the Indian customer with award-winning content from the US along with blockbusters from Indian and regional makers.”
While India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said it doesn’t have the power to censor any content online, Indian users of Amazon Prime Video reported that all nude scenes in shows ranging from The Man in the High Castle to California are censored and blurred out by Amazon.
In South Africa, the Amazon Prime Video SVOD competitor Netflix that launched in January hasn’t enacted censorship but did trim its “erotica” offering for the country with a vastly reduced offering of shows and films in that category, compared to what is offers in America.
The Naspers SVOD ShowMax hasn’t censored the programming it carries in South Africa and neither has Pride TV, South Africa’s first LGBT VOD channel that launched in August.
See the trailer here:
