The Super Bowl was interrupted by a brief pornographic clip in certain parts of the KVOA-TV Tucson area, specifically hitting homes watching the standard feed over the local Comcast cable system. Investigations have ruled out any involvement or error on the part of the television station; indeed, Comcast has admitted that it was the target of a malicious act and is investigating how it occurred. No other MVPD services carrying KVOA were affected, nor was the high definition feed on the Comcast system.
"We are appalled this highly inappropriate material was displayed for some Comcast customers," states
KVOA President /GM Gary Nielsen said, "Our internal investigation shows the signal left KVOA with no interruptions or inappropriate material. Cox cable, satellite providers, DirecTV, Dish and our over-the-air viewers received the clean feed. KVOA provides Cox with a feed via a fiber line and Cox sends a subsequent feed of our signal through a fiber line to Comcast."
Comcast Corporate Affairs Manager Kelle Maslyn stated, "We are mortified by last evening’s Super Bowl interruption and we apologize to our customers. Our initial investigation suggests this was an isolated malicious act. We are conducting a thorough investigation to determine how this happened."
RBR/TVBR observation: This is a new thing for the media to worry about – inadvertent slips of the tongue near an open mic are one thing. Malicious high tech attacks on the very program stream are another. This is not the first such attack. It’ll be interesting to see if they become more widespread.
