Anyone else smell a made-up censorship struggle in the South Park [beep] controversy?

OK, stay with me here.

The story they're telling is that the episode included some self-censorship, which makes sense in an episode making a point about censorship, and that Comedy Central added additional censorship before broadcasting. No one (that I've heard) has specifically said which censorship was added.

The "Censored" rectangle in front of Muhammad had to be part of the original episode, the story doesn't work without it. Tom Cruise gets a rectangle when he's immune from criticism and loses it when he isn't, that's the work of a writer, not a censor. The fully-beeped "here's what I've learned" summations at the end that make everything perfect again must have been originally censored, that fits the show's style much better than actually ending with perfect resolution.

That just leaves the beeps that replace Muhammad's name. That part might have been added by the network, and I think that's the story they'll tell. But something still feels wrong:

1. They allowed his name in the previous episode and one a few years ago

2. When you're trying to suppress a word you blank it. You beep it if you want to call attention to the word you blocked.

So I believe the show's creators and the network agreed in advance that the focus of the episode would be the missing parts, and the network obligingly took the heat for "censoring" the show. They got wide publicity and extensive discussion on Yahoo Answers and probably got high ratings for the show. A radical Islamic group assisted by issuing a call for violence that it claimed was a warning.

So - controversy planned in advance to get ratings. What do you think?