NEW ZEALAND — Alas for New Zealand’s youthful and television watching rugby fans, it took less than four minutes on a Sunday afternoon to entirely destroy their innocence. At least, that’s the claim of some adults who were horrified when pay-per-view programming managed to temporarily replace the free-to-air Prime Television’s sports footage they were watching. There was no reason for viewers of the televised Toyota Grassroots rugby match to expect anything more exciting than a broken bone or bloodied nose during the infamously full body contact game. While they got an eyeful of full body contact during the momentary programming glitch, it wasn’t between rugby players and it didn’t involve anything even vaguely resembling a rugby uniform – padded or unpadded.
What competitor station Television Three claims has “outraged” parents were several minutes of Desperate Black Wives 2, which Prime admits qualifies as “inappropriate material” for the viewing audience. According to Prime, the programming boo-boo took place due to a distribution fault related to Sky TV’s pay-per-view Spice Channel, which caused its footage to briefly air on the wrong channel.
Rival channels lost no time in broadcasting the misdeed, with TV 3 reporting disgust and shock on the part of viewers horrified by the video footage.
Newstalk ZB reports that Prime Television representative Tony O’Brien apologized to offended viewers, explaining that the adult content was intended for Auckland region and Sky digital viewers but had somehow become temporarily misdirected during the distribution process. Sky is said to be taking steps in ensure that such a mistake does not happen again.
Unfortunately for Prime, Lorraine Watts is a parent with little interest in technical issues like distribution errors or digital platform subscriptions. Her 12-year-old son switched on the Sunday game and gained a brief education in more than just passing a ball.
Watts told local media that she was “Horrified! It is not the sort of thing I want my 12-year-old to see on TV. It was a full blown sex scene – male and female right in the middle of their little do and that was full on.”
Although no complaints have been filed yet, Watts intends to put Prime Television’s feet to the legal fire, a move that could lead to a fine, lost advertising revenue, or removal from the air if the channel is found to have violated broadcasting regulations.
