The Standard Media Group on Monday, September 20, announced that it will experience an interruption in its television and radio broadcasting services.
SMG stated that the interruptions are expected to last between three and eight minutes across its television and radio platforms.
The interruptions would last one week starting September 19, 2021.
The media house explained that the interruptions are due to satellite sun outage.
According ABC Science, sun outage occurs when the energy from the sun disrupts the signal from a satellite. All satellites are affected by sun outages but geostationary satellites are particularly vulnerable.
Geostationary satellites are those that are responsible for TV and radio broadcasts, telecommunication and in some areas, the internet.
When the sun revolves around the equator, it passes behind the satellites causing disruption of transmission of waves from the source to the satellite and back.
Normally, the sun takes about ten minutes to pass behind a satellite, which is enough to cause a disruption of TV and radio broadcasts as well as satellite internet
However, SMG noted that the outage is a natural occurrence that is unavoidable but only temporary.
On August 2, Citizen TV, NTV and Inooro TV stations abruptly went off air for about 15 minutes during prime time bulletins. A manager at the Royal Media Services confirmed that the three stations suffered a technical hitch on a transmission line they share.
The glitch, which emanated from a satellite station in Nakuru, affected ADN decoder users among other channels.
