[www.guardion.co.uk.]- Media regulator Ofcom has fined Playboy TV £22,500 for “serious and repeated breaches” of the broadcasting code after it aired sexually explicit material unencrypted.

The broadcaster, owned by Benelux Limited, was sanctioned over seven programmes on its Playboy One service between September and December 2007, after Ofcom received five complaints. Playboy One aired as an unencrypted channel until September 2008.

Ofcom investigated broadcasts included sequences depicting masturbation, oral sex between women and men and women, “clear labial detail”, sexual intercourse, and full nudity. Some programmes also included strong language “in an overtly sexual context”.

In its ruling, Ofcom said that the “explicitness, strength and/or sustained nature of the sexual content and language” was unacceptable on an unencrypted free-to-air channel, adding that the programmes should have been encrypted.

The regulator also said the broadcaster had failed to provide “adequate protection” for viewers from “potentially harmful or offensive material” over the programmes and that for Playboy TV to contravene the code repeatedly “increased the seriousness of the compliance failure in this case”.

Playboy TV said it had completely replaced the output of Playboy One in February last year with a schedule that was “significantly softer and include heavily edited versions of any sex content”.

Before it was encrypted, Playboy TV was the only entirely free-to-air adult channel available to UK subscribers to Sky’s digital television service. According to Ofcom, the channel provided adult entertainment in the form of long and short form dramas with sexual themes and content, and sex-related reality TV programmes and documentaries.

Today’s sanction comes four years after Playboy TV was fined £25,000 by Ofcom for screening a hardcore pornographic film in breach of the programme code.