IT is unfair to view it as an omen of things to come but only hours after the Government had approved the new director general of RTE, Mr Bob Collins, the station was frantically apologising for the adult nature of a film shown at the children's viewing time.
Forget the 9 p.m. watershed, or even Channel Four at its most raunchy.
Dead Solid Perfect, which was shown at 4:20 p.m. had an "F" word count of five - the participle occurred at least twice, and the past tense appeared in a number of sentences along with other words normally reserved for more mature viewing after the main evening news, when little ones are expected to be tucked up in bed.
Dead Solid Perfect is a golfing comedy starring Randy Quaid and Kathryn Harrold, who was described a few times in a term literally meaning a female dog. It was stopped at 5:05 p.m., an hour before it was due to end. A programme about Egyptian history was broadcast in its lace.
According to RTE, the matinee version of Dead Solid Perfect, which has modified the language, was meant to be shown, but the original version, uncut, went out by mistake.
"We took it off as soon as we realised," a spokeswoman said.