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Portland Television, the operator of porn channel Television X, has been fined £25,000 after rivals complained that its content was too explicit.
Serious breaches of the Ofcom broadcasting code resulted in Portland sacking the production team responsible and TVX's director of programming.
Staff at competitor "babe" channels complained to the regulator about material aired on June 8. A free-to-air promotion for the normally encrypted channel, featuring two women presenters, included explicit content the regulator judged to be "adult-sex". The two "babes" were also using explicit language to invite viewers to subscribe.
Once the channel had returned to encryption, Ofcom found, the same babes had engaged in "very explicit sexual acts" that, if in feature films, would have been classified R18. Such material is not allowed to be broadcast in the UK and can only be sold in licensed sex shops.
Portland immediately accepted the breaches - though it believed language during the FTA promotion was acceptable - and launched an inquiry. The director and producer had "knowingly chosen to breach [the] rules", the company told Ofcom at a hearing. Portland has revised training and guidelines and moved its legal director to the site of TVX's studios.
Portland-owned RHF Productions was found to have breached the Broadcasting Code with explicit FTA content as recently as February.
