It's said that WWF takes it over the edge, but what Canadian fans got Sunday night was a little bit more than they bargained for. A technical glitch apparently gave pro-wrestling fans quite an eyeful.
Famous Players, a pay-per-view service showed No Way Out, the World Wrestling Federation's latest pay-per-view event, at 17 movie theatres across Canada, including the Paramount in downtown Montreal. At the conclusion of the wrestling card, theatre screens filled with a scene from a pornographic movie.
"It was a horrid technical glitch," said Joan Fraser of Famous Players' Toronto head office. "Bell ExpressVu was supplying us the event via satellite and someone at their master control flicked the wrong switch. We were totally shocked. We've done wrestling shows before and we didn't think anything like this could possibly happen."
According to reports, the scene was a woman performing oral sex on a man. The sex scene lasted about 30 seconds at the Colisee, where a sold-out audience of 450 WWF fans paid $17 to watch the four-hour wrestling show. One distraught father estimated that 50 per cent of those at the Colisee were children, ranging in age "from 5 to 15" - a credulous age group at whom the WWF targets its sophisticated marketing efforts.
The pornographic clip was also shown in Famous Players-owned theatres in the Toronto area, Ottawa, Windsor, Moncton, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Bell ExpressVu issued a statement of apology late yesterday and took full responsibility for the blunder, which it described as a switching error.
In its statement, Bell ExpressVu said it will reimburse people who attended the wrestling event at a Famous Players theatre and retained their ticket stubs. It also offered the people complimentary tickets for the next WWF pay-per-view event, scheduled for April 30.
Bell ExpressVu has set up a toll-free phone line to handle questions or complaints. The number is (877) 991-9973.
"The company hugely regrets this situation and apologizes to anyone who viewed this brief transmission of adult programming," said Chris Frank, a Bell ExpressVu vice-president.
Frank said the problem resulted from a human error that saw a manual switch accidentally moved. "It was stopped as quickly as it was detected," Frank said. "We are reviewing our switching facility to ensure that this doesn't happen again. It was a very unfortunate human error."
The switching facility will be rewired to prohibit such a manual switch, Frank said. The pornographic movie was being shown on one of Bell ExpressVu's adult pay-per-view channels.
