Porn previews aired on kids' channels

CARY, N.C., March 17 (UPI) -- Officials with Time Warner Cable in North Carolina apologized for Playboy Channel preview programming mistakenly aired on two channels aimed at children.

Keith Poston, a spokesman for the cable company, said an equipment failure led to the adult-programming previews being shown on the Kids on Demand and PreSchool On Demand channels Tuesday in parts of Cary, Garner, Morrisville, Wilson, Goldsboro, Willow Spring and Johnston County, WRAL-TV, Raleigh, N.C., reported Wednesday.

"Basically, we had a piece of equipment fail and what happened is some previews for the Playboy Channel actually got diverted into the preview box on our Kids on Demand (Ch. 252) and our PreSchool On Demand (Ch. 555)," Poston said.

He said the programs aired between 6:15 and 8:15 a.m.

"It took about an hour or so once we were notified of the problem to actually get it fixed," Poston said. "It was a technical glitch and unfortunately it hit at the worst possible time on the worst possible channels."

He said the Playboy previews were only visible to a small number of customers while most homes -- and the company's monitors -- had black screens during the affected hours.

"It was a small number of customers," Poston said, "But one's too many."

"We're very, very sorry it happened," he said.