Young viewers whose parents subscribe to Time Warner Cable in parts of North Carolina got an eyeful last Tuesday when explicit previews from The Playboy Channel ended up on two on-demand channels dedicated to children.

For at least two hours, Kids on Demand and Kids Preschool on Demand accompanied its menu of available programs for young viewers with steamy footage of naked women pawing themselves and sharing explicit sexual fantasies.

One Raleigh-area family’s four year old made inquiries of his parents as to the reason why Tom ‘n Jerry also included naked women that morning.  Horrified parents called Time Warner Cable, but technicians still took some two hours before finally pulling the pornographic previews from the channels.

Company officials were apologetic about what they characterized as a “technical glitch.”

“We’re very, very sorry it happened – we know parents are concerned,” Time Warner Cable spokesman Keith Poston told several Raleigh area newscasts. “It was a technical malfunction that caused the wrong previews to be shown on our kids’ on-demand channels. Unfortunately it hit at the worst possible time on the worst possible channels.”

Time Warner Cable has had occasional mishaps with customers subjected to unwanted explicit programming.  In 2007, one Time Warner Cable customer wrote The Consumerist about receiving a recycled Digital Video Recorder box that contained the previous owner’s recordings.  His wife might not have been concerned if it involved several editions of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, but instead she found herself scrolling through titles including, Got Male, Foursome, and Hole Diggers (Part Two).  Thankfully, she found it before the kids did.

[flv width=”576″ height=”344″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WRAL Raleigh Time Warner apologizes for porn mix-up 3-16-10.flv[/flv]

WRAL-TV Raleigh interviews one North Carolina family who got more than they bargained for when tuning into Time Warner Cable’s kids-on-demand channels, and ponders why the company didn’t yank the channels after the first complaints arrived. (3 minutes)

[flv width=”600″ height=”358″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTVD Raleigh Playboy shown on kids channels 3-16-10.flv[/flv]

WTVD-TV Raleigh explains how The Playboy Channel ended up on Time Warner Cable’s video on demand channels.  (3 minutes)