TORONTO — from www.hollywoodreporter.com – How does a cable company override a broadcaster’s signal?

That’s the question Hamilton-based TV station CHCH-TV awaits an answer to from western Canadian cable operator Shaw Cable after its Friday morning newscast in distant Ontario was interrupted by a gay porn movie.

“Shaw Cable has told us it is investigating, and will provide us with a written reply in a couple of days. We’ll share it with you then,” CHCH said in a statement after apologizing to viewers for around three minutes of pornography on their screen at 9:30 a.m. Friday morning due to the cable glitch.

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The programming mishap, which had CHCH news director Mike Katrycz apologizing via a video on the company website, is complicated by Cogeco Cable being the dominant cable player in the Hamilton region.

At the same time, CHCH explained to its viewers that its over-the-air signal is distributed to cable operators at no charge, and cable companies in turn feed that signal to rival carriers.

The retransmission of local station signals takes place countrywide, as cable operators provide them to subscribers for a fee, and in turn provide distant-signal benefits to the local stations.

The result is Shaw Cable also distributes the CHCH signal, leading to the porn glitch owing to an apparent switching error as cable technicians repaired some cut wires last Thursday night.

Earlier this month, Comcast apologized to subscribers when similar efforts to solve a technical issue led to a porn movie airing for a few seconds on a local ABC affiliate.

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Back story: Hardcore pornography isn’t usually on the schedule for morning network newscasts, but viewers of CHCH in Hamilton, Ont., got an eyeful over their morning coffee on Friday.

The station aired pornography for about a minute during Morning Live First Edition at 9:30 a.m., but news director Mike Katrycz stressed the mix-up wasn’t the station’s fault.

“It was beyond the control of our station,” he said. “As soon as I saw it I got on the phone. I knew something was desperately wrong.”

The issue turned out to be between the station and the viewers. CHCH was broadcasting news, but the all the cable audience saw was smut.

Someone at one of the local cable companies had inadvertently switched the CHCH feed over to a more explicit channel, which is what Katrycz saw in his office.

The splicing error was fixed, but not until after the damage had been done. Subscribers to Cogeco and Shaw cable broadcasts were exposed to the pornographic clip, but viewers watching the over-the-air broadcast weren’t affected.

The clip lasted for what “felt like an eternity,” Katrycz said, and phones immediately started ringing.

“We apologized to everybody, even though it’s not our fault,” he said. “It was on our channel on some cable providers and for that we’re very apologetic.”

Katrycz has a television in his office, and noticed the problem immediately. He called the station’s master control room, but they assured him the broadcast remained family friendly.

“I was fuming,” he said. “But when I called down to find out what the heck was going on, they didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Cogeco Cable denied that the problem was related to its cable network in a news release.

“Nothing on the Cogeco network or services we provide caused this event,” said Cogeco’s Glenda Lloyd. “However, we are unhappy that some of our customers were able to view this inappropriate content.”

Shaw did not return requests for comment.

“In all my years of television, I’ve never seen something like this,” said Katrycz. “We promise we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

But this isn’t the first time pornography has invaded a television broadcast. It’s not even the first time this month.

On April 12, an ABC affiliate in Colorado Springs, Colo. had more than three hours of early morning unauthorized programming that including pornography and infomercials.

In 2007, thousands of viewers in New Jersey watching the Disney Channel show Handy Manny saw a brief clip of hard-core pornography because of a similar splicing error.

And in 2009, NFL fans in Tucson, Ariz., were treated to a 30-second clip of pornography during the Super Bowl — a time slot for which some companies pay millions.