Korean broadcaster bans Psy’s record-breaking ‘Gentleman’ video

Psy’s new music video “Gentleman” is not only breaking YouTube records, hitting more than 145 million views in less than a week, it just got banned by his home country’s biggest TV broadcaster.

South Korea’s KBS, a state-funded broadcaster, said Thursday it was banning the video because it shows Psy kicking a traffic cone with a “no parking” sign on it. The TV network says it has a policy prohibiting the showing of videos that abuse public property.

The ban comes as “Gentleman,” the follow-up to 2012’s incredibly popular “Gangnam Style” that premiered last Saturday, gallops into YouTube record books.

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In its first full day, the video was watched more than 50 million times, blazing past the previous 24-hour record of 8 million views held by Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend.” Psy’s video now has nearly 146 million views.

If it follows the same growth trajectory as that of “Gangnam Style,” the video would surpass the 1-billion-views mark within a month, according to the Wall Street Journal, which took great pains to do the math and chart the progress of the video. By comparison, it took “Gangnam Style” five months to reach 1 billion.

If that pace continues, the sequel could hit 12.6 billion views in just 75 days, according to the Wall Street Journal’s calculation. That would be more than what YouTube generates in a month for all of its millions of videos.

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