Sky Hit By Ofcom Over Entourage Swearing Shortly After Game Of Thrones – Deadline

Sky has been rapped by Ofcom for the second time within the area of a yr over swearing in considered one of its repeat exhibits, this time Entourage.

Ofcom stated a pre-watershed repeat of Entourage on the Sky Comedy channel in August failed to offer a compulsory pin code to guard under-18s, and the phrase “f***ing” was broadcast. Sky careworn that the phrase got here very quickly after the present began and it was pulled with simply three minutes having elapsed.

In the UK, Ofcom’s code requires that individuals underneath 18 are protected against “unsuitable material” in packages.

Ofcom permits exhibits with intercourse, violence or swearing to air earlier than the night watershed so long as they’re protected by a pin code. In this occasion, the pin code failed and youthful viewers had been uncovered to the swearword. Sky stated it launched two rapid modifications to forestall a reoccurrence, which “add further fail-safe resilience into the process.”

HBO smash comedy Entourage has been obtainable as a Sky boxset for almost a decade and is commonly repeated.

‘Game of Thrones’ incident

Sky added that there’s a “difference” between the Entourage incident and what occurred with Game of Thrones final yr, when a repeat of the mega-hit aired within the morning and not using a pin code and under-18s had been in a position to simply entry an episode “which contained multiple use of offensive language including ‘c**t’, ‘f**ck’ and ‘s**t’.”

The Entourage error, Sky stated, was on account of a fault with the “EPG meta data that activates the PIN demand on some of our Sky Platforms, not an ‘excess of data’ in the system.” It careworn that Game of Thrones and Entourage are the one two breaches out of 23,000 hours value of comparable content material broadcast because the introduction of the pin code in 2020.

Ofcom took under consideration Sky’s pulling of the Entourage repeat virtually instantly after the swearword together with its makes an attempt since to guard viewers from future slip-ups. However, the regulator nonetheless discovered the pay-TV large to be in breach of its code.

A latest Ofcom report discovered that viewers primary fears round profane content material middle on the necessity to defend youngsters, slightly than any influence these exhibits can have on particular person adults.