Sky News’ morning got off to a bit of a rough start after the station found itself unable to broadcast.
On Friday, viewers who would usually tune into the news channel for their morning updates were initially greeted with archive footage, followed by a mysterious message, which read: “We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.”
During the outage, Sky News Group’s executive chairman wrote on X that the team was “working hard to restore all services”, while sports anchor Jacquie Beltrao said: “We’re obviously not on air.”
“We’re trying,” she added, alongside a crossed fingers emoji.
Sky News presenter Gareth Barlow also commented on the debacle, putting the issue down to “tech issues that don’t seem limited to just Sky News”.
“IT and production teams are working on a solution. See you, soon?!” he said.
Sky News’ broadcasting woes were linked with a mass technology outage that has affected Windows computers, impacting airports, banks and other services around the world, and presenting users with the so-called “blue screen of death”.
According to several reports, the issues were the result of a flawed update to the anti-virus software Crowdstrike.
The outage has caused numerous airlines to ground their flights on Friday morning, with BBC News reporting supermarkets experiencing “checkout chaos”, with the London Stock Exchange also reportedly affected.
Crowdstrike said that it was “aware of reports of crashes on Windows related to the Falcon Sensor”, as reported by The Telegraph.
After around two hours, Sky News eventually returned to broadcasting, albeit not from the show’s usual studio.
Broadcaster Anna Jones began by telling viewers: “A major global IT outage is affecting many of the world’s largest companies, including us here at Sky News.”
She continued: “The system failure is believed to be caused by a flawed anti-virus update, although nothing has as yet been confirmed. Major broadcasters, banks and IT companies are affected, as well as airports, with some flights having been grounded.”
HuffPost UK has contacted Sky News for comment on the outage.