Orange : Cablevision Apologizes for Adult Channel Ads

Cablevision of Orange has apologized to the city for “inadvertently” airing commercials for the Playboy station on the children-oriented Nickelodeon channel.

The incidents, which prompted a number of complaints to City Hall, occurred just a week after the city attorney’s office reached a settlement with the company over unscrambled airing of Playboy and Hot Spice channels.

But the city attorney’s office said the latest problem appears to have been corrected.

“We are just viewing this as a mistake,” said Assistant City Atty. David De Berry.

In its letter to the city, Cablevision said a software program automatically assigns commercials to unsold time slots and that a technician must manually remove the Playboy ads from channels not aimed at adults. The spots aired once Thursday and eight times Sunday, said Kristy Casasanta, Cablevision’s general manager.

“It was a onetime incident,” Casasanta said. “It is not our policy to insert Playboy commercials on Nickelodeon or any other family channel.”

That explanation did little to soothe cable TV subscribers who have in the past found their children watching adult movies on unscrambled stations.

“To me it was so shocking to think this was on Nickelodeon,” resident Kathy Davis said. “Everybody who has children feels the children can watch this channel and you don’t have to be there.”