Anti-Semitic Audio Intrudes on Cable Football Hookup

Pirate broadcasters broke into a cable telecast of Sunday’s Super Bowl game as it was being shown to thousands of Los Angeles-area viewers, disrupting the audio portion of the play-by-play with anti-Semitic remarks.

“We’re not really sure how this illegal transmission was made,” said Kyle Smith, general manager of Century Southwest Cable in Santa Monica. “Whoever did it was sophisticated.”

Smith asked the FBI to investigate.

The illegal transmission occurred at 3:11 p.m. in the first half of the San Francisco 49ers-Cincinnati Bengals game that Century was picking up from the NBC network.

Viewers at first heard music from the 1960s cartoon series “The Jetsons” and then two male voices were heard talking over those of NBC game announcers Dick Enberg and Merlin Olsen.

Smith said the first voice mentioned the name Bill Rosendahl, vice president of the firm, who also conducts a weekly interview program with community leaders.

Although the company did not provide a transcript of the remarks that were aired, Smith said he understood the first voice to have said: “This is Century Southwest Cable with Bill Rosendahl. There are too many (obscenity) Jews in this entertainment industry.”

Smith said a second male voice then replied: “We have to cut you off, Bill, because you can’t say those things on TV.”

Rosendahl said he was “baffled, shocked and outraged” that his name was used in the bogus transmission. He knew of no motive for the broadcast.

Officials said the studio was vacant all weekend and that only “six or seven” employees working in the emergency repair and dispatch departments were present at the time of the broadcast.

“The studio was definitely closed,” said dispatch supervisor Lloyd Sanchez. “It hasn’t been used since Friday.

“I’ve been told by the engineering department that they don’t find any tampering in and around our location,” Sanchez continued. “I’ve been told it requires a sophisticated degree of technology to accomplish this.”

Smith said the pirate broadcast was heard in an area with 100,000 cable subscribers--including Sherman Oaks, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Brentwood, Westwood, Pacific Palisades and Marina del Rey.

Century has had incidents of sabotage in the past which management has blamed on labor disputes. But officials said Sunday they currently have a good relationship with union employees.

Smith, however, said that only a week ago someone using a hatchet severed a cable in Westwood that affected as many as 20,000 subscribers.

“It was not an accident,” he said.