New Jersey Comcast Shows Porn Instead Of Disney Channel
Parents, get used to it. At any time, and for any reason, there could be porn. You could be walking down the street and accidentally get hit by a truck full of porn. You could be watching Tom Brokaw host a special about healthcare and suddenly, wham. You're watching porn. You could be watching the Disney channel, get up to go clean the bedroom, come back and your 5 year old will be watching hard core porn. Get used to it. From the NY Daily News:
The "Handy Manny" cartoon on Playhouse Disney was abruptly interrupted yesterday morning when Comcast honchos mistakenly aired the porno in sections of Jersey."What are they doing?" a 5-year-old boy asked his parents when an explicit sexual scene showed up on his TV screen.
The boy's father, Paul Dunleavy, was appalled.
"It was two people doing their thing, it was full-on and it was disgusting," said Dunleavy, who asked that his son not be named. "It wasn't something you'd expect to see on Cinemax, never mind Disney."
...
"If you can't feel safe letting kids watch the Disney Channel, what can you do?" asked Dunleavy, a father of three from Middletown, N.J.Comcast isn't denying it, but they don't seem to have any idea what happened."I couldn't believe it. We try to do the right thing to protect our kids from this stuff, and then they broadcast it on children's TV," Dunleavy said.
"My wife was like, 'Oh, my God.' She was shocked."
"We had an isolated issue in a local New Jersey facility, we immediately detected the issue and it was corrected promptly," he said in a statement.Is this the corporate equivalent of a nip slip? —MEGHANN MARCO"We apologize to any customer who experienced it and continue to investigate the root cause of it."
Cable porn gaffe: The full Mickey! [Daily News] (Thanks, Phil!)
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Comments:
Was I the only one who went into this thinking "Handy Manny" WAS the porno?
I wonder what recourse this guy has.... I mean, its Comcast. Do they NOT deserve to be lambasted at every opportunity?
@not_seth_brundle: No, you were not :)
Was I the only one thinking, "Man, I need to start watching the Disney channel!"?
This reminds me of what the guy in Fight Club did to the kiddy movies...Maybe some guy is doing like him?
Why does this always happen on the children's channels? eg,
Viewers of "The Flintstones" got a little more yabba-dabba-do than they expected yesterday.
The local cable company broadcast explicit sex scenes from The Playboy Channel over the Cartoon Network for several minutes just before 1 p.m. -- while the audio continued to be the voices of Fred and Barney.
The glitch came on a day when bad weather had closed most southwest Missouri schools. A mother called TCI of Springfield Inc., which provides the Cartoon Network to 50,000 homes, to complain.
Ross Summers, the cable outlet's general manager, said the problem likely arose in testing the signal for the Playboy channel, which the company intends to offer in February.
Umm, it might not be a stretch to assume that the channel monitors thought "Playhouse Disney" was "Playboy Playhouse", the PPV channel, and accidentally put it on the wrong channel.
2 people having sex was "disgusting"? I sure hope this guy never has to have "the talk" with his kid.
People need to get over themselves. Sure, it isn't something you show your kid, but it isn't like they'll be scarred for life.
@Scazza:
Playhouse Disney isn't the name of the channel. It's just the name of a block of children's programming on the Disney Channel.
However, that does seem like a plausible explanation.
This kind of thing happens a little too often for me to think it was a legitimate accident every single time. The guy sounds like he's accusing the Disney Channel of showing it, though, which is wrong.
Comcast should offer some money back to anyone who saw it rather than an empty apology, but they're Comcast, so they won't.
It's funny that a guy who has a child (and thus has had sex) calls porn disgusting, though.
How do you do that? Is there a big "turn Disney channel to porn" switch that you can accidentally bump with your elbow on your way to the bathroom?
"It was two people doing their thing, it was full-on and it was disgusting"
That's pretty ironic from the parent of a 5 year old. I don't have kids, so I can't tell, but some 5 years ago, I'm pretty sure this dude was humping good and did not think of it as disgusting.
Maybe having kids turns you into some kind of asexual impotent lump.
I sure wish my TV would come with free porn, on any channel for that matter. What's wrong with this guy?
Thank God (or Al Gore?) for the Internet...
@scoobydoo: Actually exposure to pornography at an early age has been linked to a number of sexually "deviant" behaviors in adults. I work for a telecom provider and these incidents are more than likely intentional.
@ not_seth_brundle: nope. if this happens to my kids while cable's on, instead of it being freak out time, it'll be time for another installment of The Talk. Shortly followed by How To File a Complaint time. . . .
All this over something that most people do and seem to quite like. If the kid didn't understand it, what's the problem? Just turn the TV off or put in a DVD. I don't like most of what's on broadcast TV. Simple solution: I don't watch broadcast TV.
@Scazza:
Blah, I say some frat boy working at Comcast did it on purpose. I mean, the way technology streamlines everything it seems difficult to do that by accident.
I know a guy who worked in various aspects of cable TV for 9 years. He did work in "head ends" (where all the signals from various sources get combined and put onto the cable) and he said that the low-level techs would make switches like this for just a few seconds, just for fun. All it took was swapping two cables around, waiting a bit, then swapping them back.
"It was two people doing their thing, it was full-on and it was disgusting," said Dunleavy.
Oh you know his wife was standing right beside him giving him the eye, otherwise he would have said something like ..
"It was two people doing their thing, it was full-on and it was one I've already seen," said Dunleavy
@pestie: Hearing about things like that pisses me off. I saw some pretty violent stuff when I was a kid that stayed with me for a while, and to think that it might happen to an innocent kid as the result of some asshole's joke should result in the loss of his job.
@tracyjordanvsodb: Actually, I found out about the Playboy Channel by accident when I was around 7 or 8. Now I'm not "normal" in the way of sexual tastes at all. I wouldn't say porn has made me a freak or anything like that. Really, it let me bloom into the only open-minded person in my family.
What I am tempted to say the cause of my depraved ways would be the death of my father at an early age. Considering the psychology behind it and what I enjoy behind closed doors, it seems to add up more than porn scarred me for life.
Just my two cents.
Pesonally, I think the guy should launch a class action lawsuit against Comcast. And anyone who doesn't have a child has no right to criticize the guy for his reaction.
@ikes: I think he just means they wouldn't understand the viewpoint of a parent. I can imagine it changes your outlook on pretty much everything.
No way my son is going to see something as heinous as two people... ugh... making love! Just typing it makes me feel dirty.
I knew Comcast was trying to corrupt my child in devious ways but I outsmarted them: My Christian Coalition Approved DVD collection was nearby; so I switched off that awful, disgusting, trash and quickly threw on my copy of "The Passion of the Christ". There. Let my son watch Jesus dying for his sins seven or eight times and he'll know just how evil and dirty sex truly is.
"The boy's father, Paul Dunleavy, was appalled."
Appalled that he had to go through the embarrassment of explaining something so disgusting that he'd rather not talk about ever.
Parents don't fear for their kids in these situations, they fear for themselves.
Come on comcast kids -- if you're going to have some fun put Little Einsteins in the middle of porn. Hearing those calls would be worth getting fired
@Craig: The guy has every right to criticize Comcast, but is what happened worthy of a story in a newspaper? Plus, the guy unfairly makes Disney look bad in the article by mentioning their name a couple of times when they had nothing to due with the error.
It was an isolated incident and the company apologized. 'Nuff said.
Today, Comcast disconnected my cable while trying to upgrade. It's down till tomorrow. (I'm "borrowing" my neighbor's wifi.)
I like how he noted that it was more than 'you'd expect to see on cinemax'. He's all like 'yeah softcore porn is totally cool, its that hardcore stuff that the kids shouldn't see'.
Goddarnit! I need to get Comcast.
Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison for exposing children to porn.
Comcast, a little bad pr so far.
Then there was that little "wardrobe malfunction" during the super bowl. I believe the fcc wanted 550000 penalty for that incident.
From the Daily News story:
"Comcast chiefs also were investigating why the X-rated action was not screened out by parental controls on TV sets."
Parental controls probably limit children's access to listed X channels not the Disney Channel playing porno.
Also most parents don't understand how to enable parental controls or even what they are...
This happened about a week ago on the Discovery Channel, also in New Jersey... That makes them two for two in New Jersey..
It's one thing when your looking for porn, but to have it come on when your kids are watching Disney or Discovery is rediculous.
Maybe if the government hit Comcast with an charge, something like indecency, or allowing a minor to view pornagraphy it would stop.
how come exposure to porn at an early age does not seem to impact european kids? they experience less anti-social sexual deviance than we do in the US. they showed deep throat on TV in Italy. help me out here.
@tracyjordanvsodb: You mean cables never get crossed? The wrong tape never gets played?
You do realize that this being the Internet, most people here were exposed to pornography at an early age and are thus, according to you, sexually deviant.
I'm sure, being Comcast, that they charged every one of those people for a one month subscription to Playboy as well as fees to add and drop it.
@not_seth_brundle: at the 1st guy, i'm with you. I thought Handy Manny WAS the porno...i guess it is, they just grabbed the wrong tape!!!
Shit happens.
Complain to the cable company. Explain it to your kids. Move on.
@TechnoDestructo
Parents don't fear for their kids in these situations, they fear for themselves.
Egg-zackly.
@pestie:
I'd like to "switch" a few things around on assholes like that. Like maybe some major arteries...
"You don't have kids, so you have no right to comment on anything involving kids" is complete crap. It's an argument made by people who have no other argument to make. I thought that before I had kids, and I think it even more so now that I do.
I'm surprised so many people think it's ok for kids to watch porn. Here I was thinking this would be a thread bashing Comcast.
@Craig> ...anyone who doesn't have a child has no right to criticize the guy for his reaction.
This is the same kind of argument used by corrupt people worldwide to "justify" bad behavior: I did it for my kids (or my family, my people, etc.) therefore it makes it morally right, and anyone who isn't in the same situation has no right to criticize me.
But endless mindless violence is OK, right?
exactly darkstar, in Europe violence is known to be much worse for kids than exposure to sex. Don't let my kids watch porn but if they are exposed to it on the internet or TV, so what? And have no problem with them seeing sex in a movie. All this shock over Janet Jackson's breast blew me away. A breast? wow
Yeah, in europe porn is displayed on PUBLIC TELEVISION after 11:00 pm till like 4 am....
Anyways...i have directv and its a centralized facility so there is no problem in regional video data corrupting the stream...
Oh no! The nature channel had two Zebra doin' it! SUE!
I for one want to know how the dad answered his kid.
"Uhh, johny, they're doing a dance, a bad dance."