Of all the technical errors that can happen, the children of Chile got the one of the worst.

“My eldest daughter told me one of her friends said to put on channel 21 (Disney), and instead of the usual program there was the Playboy channel. Luckily my smallest one, 10 years old, was sleeping at the time,” said Jacqueline Orchad, a Chilean mother, to the daily El Mercurio.

The cable company responsible, VTR, said the switch only happened in one northern city and only for a few minutes.  The switch happened accidentally as technicians were doing maintenance on the systems.

Unfortunately, as most parents know, a few minutes is all it takes for the questions to start.  I doubt this is how many Chilean parents were expecting to explain to their children the “birds and the bees.”

What makes the situation worse is that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.  Last month, Time Warner accidentally had Playboy previews play instead of Kids On Demand and Preschool On Demand shows in several North Carolina counties.  And who can forget last year’s Super Bowl mistake. While VTR’s mistake lasted only a few minutes, Time Warner’s lasted for two hours.

You’d think after Time Warner’s accident that we wouldn’t hear something like this again.  How do these things keep happening and how are the cable companies going to prevent it from happening in the future?