C4 and C5 taken down by Red Bee fire
September 27, 2021
UK’s Channel 4 and Channel 5 suffered outages on the evening of September 25th following a fire at playout provider Red Bee. Viewers of Channel 4 reported seeing a still screen for about 25 minutes, while Channel 5 was also off air for about 30 minutes. ITV, Paramount and E Music were affected as well.
Red Bee Media blamed an “activation of the fire suppression systems” at its broadcast centre in west London. It is reported the system caused a ‘sonic wave’ that brought down servers.
C4 confirmed the problem and continued to experience some disruption on September 26th, with cooking chat show Sunday Brunch briefly interrupted as viewers’ screens went blank.
Red Bee Media, said: “As a result of this incident and the automatic safety measures set in motion at the time, several services originating from the broadcast centre have been disrupted. We are continuing to work to restore all services and remedy any issues caused by this incident.”
Channel 5 went off air for some viewers at 7pm, with a message on the channel saying: “We apologise for the interruption. We’ll be back with you as soon as we can.”