Comcast Offers $10 Credit After Super Bowl Porn Blunder
Operator's Tucson System Continues to Investigate Possible 'Malicious Act'
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 2/2/2009 9:14:25 PM
Comcast is offering a $10 credit to Tucson, Ariz., subscribers "impacted" by a 30-second porn clip that interrupted the local NBC affiliate's Super Bowl XLIII broadcast Sunday.
The clip from Shorteez, a hard-core pay-per-view adult channel owned by Playboy Enterprises, appeared in the standard-definition feed of KVOA-TV on Comcast's local system in the game's fourth quarter immediately after the Arizona Cardinals scored to take a 23-20 lead with less than three minutes to go in the game. The HD version was unaffected.
The 30-second clip showed full-frontal male nudity, the Tucson Citizen reported. A second clip, which also aired during the telecast, showed about 10 seconds of end credits for Club Jenna, another Playboy-owned adult pay-per-view channel, according to the newspaper.
"We can't undo what happened, but we remain deeply sorry for the impact this situation has had on our customers," Comcast Tucson corporate affairs manager Kelle Maslyn said in a statement Monday. "To that end, we will be issuing a $10 credit to any Comcast video customer in Tucson who was impacted. While this credit won't change what happened, we hope that it will demonstrate to our customers, and to the Tucson community, how seriously we are taking this situation."
Maslyn said Comcast is "continuing with our investigation into what we believe may have been an isolated, malicious act, and will aggressively pursue all leads until we come to resolution."
Comcast customers in the Tucson area seeking the credit were directed to call (888) 315-8219.
"We are appalled this highly inappropriate material was displayed for some Comcast customers," Gary Nielsen, president and general manager of KVOA Communications, said in a statement posted on KVOA's site.
Comcast Tucson receives the KVOA feed through an arrangement with Cox Communications. Mike Dunne, Cox director of media relations for southern Arizona, said no porn was broadcast to the MSO's customers. "We have received no evidence that any inappropriate material was broadcast on any of our channels during the Super Bowl," he said in a statement Monday. "The alleged incident appears to be isolated to the Comcast territory. We will offer our support to all appropriate organizations to help them determine what happened."
Media watchdog group Parents Television Council president Tim Winter urged the companies involved to take immediate steps to ensure that "this type of indecent material does not air again during times when children are in the audience."
"These ‘accidents' seem to happen more often than they should, and if it truly was an accident, why is it always porn that's aired?" Winter said in a statement. "TV station ‘accidents' never include a rerun of The Cosby Show.... if someone intentionally caused it, then that person or persons need to be properly dealt with."
In a similar 2007 incident, Comcast broadcast porn to subscribers in New Jersey during an episode of Disney Channel children's show Handy Manny.
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Ten dollar credit really is a joke. Am not in the area but I wouldn't be happy till I saw comcast fined by the fcc.
Jake - 2/3/2009 6:25:36 PM EST -
As a former GM of Comcast cable systems and I am pretty sure the problem had to do with VOD streams "jumping". That means the system probably does not have VOD encryption for their adult streams. It's typical Comcast spending money only after they have a situation. Cable bills are crazy high because the corporation wants to make 45% margins and they will not spend more money to protect situations like this. They will simply spend the money only AFTER the situation has happened. Oh.. and what they don't tell you is that they will spend money on upgrading the system now and then raise the cable rates next year and blame it on programmers.
Oh.. and the $10 is a joke. Here's a quote from another article today about RCN having transmission difficulties with the Superbowl.
RCN is compensating affected customers by providing them with a service credit for one month of cable TV service, ranging from $75 to $100 depending on their subscription plans.
I also find it funny that RCN will proactively place the credit on the customers bill while Comcast will only put the credit on the customers bill AFTER they call. Again - not caring about the customer and not valuing the customers' time and inconvenience.
Former GM - 2/3/2009 10:10:35 AM EST -
The $10 coupon or whatever they're offering is a joke. If they really valued those customers and did not want to possibly have future lawsuits for "scarring the youth", they would offer perhaps a discount on cable for a year, hell two years. That is far cheaper than a long lawsuit battle. Give them something they will feel the whole year round, a cheaper cable bill, not full frontal nudity by offering them only $10, that's whats really offensive.
Justin of A - 2/2/2009 10:59:44 PM EST
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