Cox finds the cause of pornography invasion

Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2000 | 10:50 a.m.

The business news on cable suddenly got a lot more interesting for a second time Tuesday morning as the stock report was interrupted by a couple having sex.

The sexually oriented programming replaced the financial news service on CNBC shortly after 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, repeating an incident that occurred Monday evening.

Cable company workers trying to find the cause of the original problem immediately saw the channel switch and took the risque material off the air within a minute, said Steve Schorr, Cox Communications vice president of public affairs.

The second incident gave the cable company's six-person team the opportunity to find out what went wrong.

The culprit was not, as originally suspected, somebody hacking into the computerized channel switcher, but a piece of faulty electronic equipment installed over the summer, Schorr said.

"We are confident that we know now what the problem was so we can correct the problem, so it doesn't happen again," he said.

Schorr said the company couldn't have foreseen the failure of this particular piece of sophisticated electronic equipment. At least for now, the cable channel switching will be done manually.

Schorr said Cox Communications and the company's employees apologize for the incidents. A number of employees received angry phone calls complaining of the adult programming.

"We're all members of the community," he said. "People take this very, very seriously."

About 340,000 residents in the Las Vegas Valley receive the Cox Communications cable signal.