Deck the halls with boughs of holly. Tis the season to possibly make massive TV follies. We all know CNN likes to get a little wild sometimes, especially when there's a holiday involved, but it was still quite a shock to see reports that a Boston cable provider had accidentally aired a half-hour of hardcore porn on Thanksgiving evening instead of normal programming. But it turns out those reports might have all stemmed from one very inaccurate source: the Internet.
Quite soon after web entrepreneurs announced plans to trim the staggering amount of misinformation that gets tossed around online, one Twitter user (@Solikearose, who has since gone private) tweeted that New Jersey cable company RCN had aired around 30 minutes of an adult movie focused on transgender porn star Riley Quinn. In case you wondered, there were screenshots, in which the too-hot-for-CNN footage was behind a TV info bar indicating the food series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown should have been airing instead.
CNN initially came out with a statement that basically pushed the blame onto RCN with a request for more information, according to Variety. However, it wasn't long before the network reversed that stance and then released another statement that said RCN reps were convinced there were no network shenanigans in Boston on Thanksgiving evening, naughty bits or no naughty bits. And that was then followed by an official statement form RCN Boston senior Vice President and general manager Jeff Carlson, which stated there had been no other reports of the incident surfaced outside of the one tweet, and that the user's account is normal. The only possible way this all could have happened, assuming it wasn't just a hoax, would involve the subscriber's equipment malfunctioning, but that would require testing.
So, all in all, it sounds like there wasn't any actual foul play going down on CNN while most people were having their third or fourth holiday dinners of the day. The planned block of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown episodes likely aired the way it should have, without any lubricated interruptions. But even if it wasn't actually true, porn star Riley Quinn still seems to have gotten a kick out of it and took to Twitter to show appreciation.
Gotta love a polite entertainer, right? Now that this issue seems to have been resolved, we can go back to our normal daily behavior of not expecting (but possibly still hoping for) Anthony Bourdain's mealtime commentary to suddenly and inexplicably get replaced by naked people. And, as always, beware of Twitter.
