Bad language aired at 2.30pm

Sky Comedy has been censured by Ofcom for airing the f-bomb in the middle of the afternoon.

The broadcaster accidentally aired an episode of Entourage which contained the offending word at 2.30pm on August 30.

It quickly realised its mistake and pulled the programme from air within three minutes of it starting – and less than 90 seconds after the word had been broadcast.

However, the incident still amounted to a breach of the Broadcast Code, regulators today ruled.

The broadcast was due to a failure of Sky’s PIN system, which should put adult content behind a passcode 

Sky said ‘two immediate changes have been introduced to prevent a recurrence, which add further fail-safe resilience into the process’, adding: ‘Sky takes its duties as a responsible broadcaster very seriously and we deal with these issues thoroughly and promptly when they occur.’

The broadcaster had previously been found in breach for a similar technical issue regarding an episode of Game Of Thrones which aired on Sky Atlantic at 7.30am in August last year , but said  there was a difference between the two cases.

Sky apologised to viewers who had seen the offending word on Entourage and said it had ‘…reviewed our processes and made changes to the systems involved so that this type of technical issue cannot happen again.’

Published: 4 Dec 2023