Hardcore porn on Disney after cable TV blunder

A CABLE television company has launched an investigation after small children ended up watching hardcore porn when they tuned into their favourite cartoon on the Disney Channel.

Paul Dunleavy, a Middletown, New Jersey, subscriber to cable giant Comcast, was stunned on Tuesday morning to find his five-year-old son watching something other than Handy Manny, a cartoon show about a bilingual Latino handyman and his talking tools.

“It was two people doing their thing, it was full-on and it was disgusting,” the father-of-three told The New York Daily News.

“I couldn’t believe it. We try to do the right thing to protect our kids from this stuff, and then they broadcast it on children’s TV.”

Comcast spokesman Fred DeAndrea said the programming error occurred at around 9.30am on Tuesday. He said it was an “isolated issue in a local New Jersey facility”.

“We automatically detected the issue and it was corrected promptly. We apologise to any customer who experienced an issue yesterday morning,” said DeAndrea, who said the mistake was made by his company, not Disney.

DeAndrea would not say for how long the pornography was broadcast, how many homes it reached, how the mistake happened and whether anyone would be disciplined.

A Disney Channel spokeswoman said Comcast has been asked for assurances that such incidents would not happen again.