© CNN
"Parts Unknown" indeed. A snafu at a cable operator in Boston led to pornography airing on the channel designated for CNN for about 30 minutes late on Thanksgiving night.
According to local reports, subscribers of RCN cable in the Boston area were surprised to find hard-core porn airing on CNN's channel around 11 p.m. ET Thursday, when CNN was carrying a rerun of the Anthony Bourdain culinary travelogue series "Parts Unknown."
Jeff Carlson, senior VP and general manager of RCN Boston said the company was "in the process of researching this incident but see no evidence our CNN network feed was compromised last evening in Boston."
There was no mention of the error on RCN's social media feeds as of noon ET Friday. But viewers were quick to comment on the situation.
RCN serves about 298,000 subscribers in the Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The porn-CNN swap appeared to only be an issue in the Boston area.
RNC was acquired earlier this year for $1.6 billion by private equity giant TPG.
Comment: CNN later
followed that statement with clarification that denied any service interruption, as had been suggested on Twitter.
"Despite media reports to the contrary, RCN assures us that there was no interruption of CNN's programming in the Boston area last night," CNN
said.
The claims originated from photos posted by Twitter user @solikearose, going by the name Rose, who
told BuzzFeed on Friday that she
"wanted to see if anyone else in Boston had been affected."
Much of the media reported on the viral story, some stories assuming hundreds of thousands of turkey-stuffed TV watchers were affected.
Rose insists she's telling the truth, sharing screenshots a chat with her cable provider's customer service with BuzzFeed. She was reportedly told to reset her TiVo box, which worked to get rid of the porn and restore CNN's programming.
"People [accused] me of faking the story and creepy men sending me dick pics and sexual messages," Rose said.
Social media delightfully reacted to the snafu that affected the "Worldwide Leader in News."
The incident also provides some insight into exactly how a fake news story can spread on the internet. Stories about the mishap sat published but unverified for hours.
But it was fake sex, just like their news