GLITCH LEAVES CABLE VIEWERS FLABBERGASTED; NEWS CHANNEL TURNS TO PORN.

Byline: Kevin Sherry Daily News Staff Writer

Viewers tuned in to see Charles Grodin, but instead found Charles groanin'.

Because of a technical glitch last month, TCI customers in Thousand Oaks who had been watching CNBC segued into an uncensored, unscrambled Playboy Channel offering.

``It was embarrassing, and we took actions,'' said Dan Deutsch, TCI's general manager.

TCI pulled Playboy from its programming lineup for two weeks, and relocated it Wednesday to Channel 84. People who want to watch the channel will now need a descrambler box, so unintentional viewing is less likely.

On the TCI system, CNBC and Playboy formerly shared Channel 32. At 10 p.m., equipment was supposed to automatically switch off CNBC and replace it with the Playboy Channel, which is scrambled for viewers who don't pay the premium fee for it.

But from late August through mid-September, ``we had some equipment fail on us,'' Deutsch said. ``The software and the scrambler did not talk to each other.''

So viewers who stayed with Channel 32 after 10 p.m. got adult entertainment of the Playboy variety, said Caroline Milton, a media services coordinator with the city. Other times, the Playboy Channel would kick on for a few minutes before the scrambler did, or parts of Playboy would bleed into the CNBC signal, Milton said.

Several shocked customers called City Hall and TCI to complain. One woman who complained to the city said she fell asleep while watching CNBC and was startled to wake up to a video of explicit sex.

But not everyone was upset.

``We even had people call us and think that it was a free preview, thanking us,'' Deutsch said.