Here's a little more on that story about KNBC (the local NBC channel in Los Angeles) deleting that train collision joke from an episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien.
There's a lot of discussion on this around the Internet. What the discussers don't realize is that the deletion under discussion — the one I linked to where KNBC newsperson Colleen Williams interrupted — was the second time this was done.
The first was Friday, September 12, the day of the Metrolink crash. Conan did this bit called The Celebrity Douchebag Collider which involves two model trains having a head-on collision. He taped the gag well before the Metrolink accident and later that evening, KNBC got a call from New York that said, in essence, "Hey, take a look at this before it airs in Los Angeles. It might be a problem." The folks at the local station took a look and decided it would be bad taste. Bodies were, after all, still being hauled out of the wreckage of a real head-on train collision.
So they did a live news cut-in during Conan's show…an update on what was going on at the accident site, I believe. Whatever it was, it caused the train joke not to be seen in Los Angeles. They did not explain that the news insert was being done to avoid broadcasting a possibly-offensive joke.
On the show for Monday night, September 22, Conan did another Celebrity Douchebag Collider bit. Again, KNBC decided to not air it but instead to insert a news cut-in. This time, they had the anchor (Ms. Williams) explain that they were doing a news update to avoid telecasting a possibly-offensive train collision joke. I would assume they mentioned it this time because it seemed so bizarre and out of place. (The first time didn't seem so odd because the report from the crash site was relevant and timely news.)
Remember I said I wasn't sure how I felt about KNBC doing this? Now that I know more of the story, I'm more inclined to think they did the right thing. It was right to do it the first time. A lot of people were still in shock over the accident, in some cases because they'd lost friends or loved ones. And since it was right to do it then, it seems a little more right to do it the second time.
This is a little different from the way I felt some time ago regarding a somewhat similar incident. In that instance, an episode of The Tonight Show did not air as planned due to a large airplane crash. I thought then the concern was a needless worry but this matter of the train crash is different. I think KNBC made the proper call.