I agree with what Chase has said above. If the audience is there or you have a high profile name you can get away with a lot as the advertisers will be there because at the end of the day it they want to have access to that audience. The thing is that when you are just starting out and no one knows what you or your show is all about it can make it a lot more difficult to sell your show to advertisers as they may not get why you use profanity in your broadcast.

So my advice if you are looking to get money from them is to keep it mostly clean and work your way backwards so that there is a sense of mutual trust between the broadcaster and the advertiser. I am sure that most advertisers will let one or two curse words slip by on a broadcast but if every 3rd word is a curse word that is not going to fly for most of them.

For example, It is one thing for a coach to be cursing at his players on the sidelines or in the locker room. It would be completely different if the same coach was to use the same language in church for example. So it is all about context.

Ultimately it does come down to social norms. What is considered normal in your target market. I know that if the majority of people in the USA for example did not like what the FCC was doing with fines and keeping profanity off the TV and Radio they would be forced to change or the elected officials that put them there would be out of a job.

-Brian