Media

Jazz FM’s porn blast broke broadcasting rules, says OfCom

By | Published on Tuesday 24 April 2012

Jazz FM

OfCom has found Jazz FM to have been in breach of broadcast rules when it accidentally played five minutes of hardcore pornography – or “clearly audible sounds of sexual activity”, as the regulator put it – over the air.

As previously reported, the incident happened during an edition of ‘Funky Sensation with Mike Vitti’ at 7.15pm on 18 Feb. Jazz FM initially said it had been due to an “unauthorised access to the live feed”, which was vague enough to make it sound like someone might have hacked into the station’s system and piped the sex noise in maliciously. Although later Vitti said that “there was unauthorised activity and behaviour in the studio”.

In it’s response to OfCom, Jazz FM explained that a member of studio staff, who has since left the company, had opened a personal email during the broadcast which contained a link to pornographic content. When they clicked on the link they had accidentally left the fader on the sound desk up, which was how the audio from the video they were watching came to be made available for all listeners to hear.

Unfortunately, it was then not possible for an on air apology to be issued, said Jazz FM, because the show had been pre-recorded. Therefore, it had to wait until the following week’s edition.

OfCom found that while the station had not broken rules regarding the content of broadcasts to which children may be listening, due to the target audience of the show and the time at which it was broadcast, Jazz FM did however breach rules which state that “broadcasters must ensure that material which may cause offence is justified by the context”.

The regulator noted that due to “repeated instances of the most offensive language in the context of the clearly audible sounds of sexual activity” this porny section of the show was “likely to have gone beyond the expectations of the audience for a DJ-led weekend, early evening programme of this type”.

It was also concerned that, although an apology had been issued on the Jazz FM website and via social networks within 40 minutes, it did not have appropriate systems in place to offer an on air apology in a more timely fashion.

But cheer up, Jazz FM. At least you’re not on TV. Imagine if you were broadcasting the news at, say, 9.30am and suddenly the programme was accidentally replaced by three minutes of hardcore porn. Imagine! That would be much worse. So spare a thought for Canadian channel CHCH, which did just that last Friday.

In the case of CHCH, the problem was due to something which occurred off site. Head Of News at CHCH, Mike Katrycz explained in an on-air apology: “This was a problem that originated, not at CHCH, but at a cable company. Apparently some cable lines had been cut, and in the splicing back together some inappropriate content went to air. Again it was beyond the control of CHCH, but we do apologise to our viewers”.

That’s right, someone accidentally fired a load of porn down the news pipe. Who knew that could even happen? Seemingly the cable company in question, Shaw Cable, isn’t sure either, as CHCH has stated that it is still waiting for an answer.

See CHCH’s full statement, along with the video of Katrycz’s apology, here. And for old time’s sake, have a listen to Jazz FM’s porn broadcast here, courtesy of Radio Fail.



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