The Global group has been found in breach of two Broadcasting Code rules for playing a song containing two offensive words a total of seven times in one week on Heart Extra.
 
The song in question – “All the Stars” by Kendrick Lamar – was only taken off rotation when the station was alerted to the broadcast of offensive language by a listener. The track included one instance of the word “fuck” and one instance of the word “motherfucker”.
 
Two of the plays were during the weekend, when children were particularly likely to be listening. The rest were during the daytime, and all plays were during automated, presenter-free hours.
 
The Licensee explained that it had investigated the issue and discovered that the track had been mistakenly attributed to a file for a different track. It said because the track was labelled incorrectly, staff had been unable to identify that it contained explicit language and this resulted in it being inadvertently played on Heart Extra on seven occasions during its daytime music-only programming.
 
Heart Extra is a national digital radio station owned and operated by Global as part of the Heart network, and broadcasting from studios at Leicester Square in London.