Ofcom has found Channel 4’s disaster recovery system to be lacking, on the day the broadcaster crashed off-air again. The regulator will now look at how broadcasters can avoid ending up in this situation again.
In the latest glitch, Steph’s Live Lunch froze for nearly a quarter of an hour on Wednesday lunchtime. Countdown was delayed by over 10 minutes.
Channel 4 has suffered a spate of problems for over a month, as work to rebuild systems continues. Channel 5 was also affected, but benefitted from a robust back-up. That meant is was able to fully return to normal last week. Servers controlling both broadcaster’s services were knocked out in the incident at Red Bee Media’s playout centre in West London.
Following complaints from viewers, Ofcom criticised Channel 4 for lacking “strong backup measures in place”. In a statement it said “it should not have taken several weeks to provide a clear, public plan and timeline for fixing the problem.”
It confirmed it will carry a full review of the equipment and facilities that Channel 4 had – and now has – in place. Based on the lessons learned, Ofcom will consider what action might be required to make sure broadcasters “do not find themselves in this situation again”.
All eyes on Red Bee Media contract
In 2019, Channel 4 signed a contract with Red Bee Media to supply it with playout, disaster recovery and access services for all six Channel 4 channels (including regional and time-shift versions), plus the Box Plus Network of music channels. As part of the contract, Red Bee Media announced it would split playout between London and Salford.
A dual-site set-up would normally result in the second site picking up playout if there was an incident at the first site. The BBC, itself with a dual-site set-up immediately transferred playout to Salford. But Channel 4 later confirmed its back-up systems for access services also failed.
While Red Bee Media was not mentioned in Ofcom’s statement, any investigation will not be complete without scrutiny of its contract with Channel 4.
Progress Report
As of 27th October 2021,
- subtitles are restored across Channel 4’s various services on Freeview, BT TV, Sky and Virgin Media and All4. On Freesat, only 4seven has subtitles. Audio Description and in-vision signing remain absent.
- Music channel Kerrang is still off-air, replaced by The Box.
- 4Music is still running a simplified schedule.
- Film4’s Irish feed returned on satellite this week.