All the FOX channels on On Digital Media's (ODM) StarSat satellite pay-TV platform in South Africa, as well as the FOX channels provided by StarSat's Chinese backer StarTimes elsewhere in Africa have gone black and blank since Wednesday night.
StarSat subscribers in South Africa and StarTimes pay-TV viewers elsewhere in Africa are now fearing that FOX has pulled all its channels from StarTimes.
StarSat subscribers are extremely worried, sad and upset since StarSat, previously known as TopTV, lost several TV channels when international channel suppliers like Turner Broadcasting Systems (TBS) and Discovery Networks International (DNI) summarily pulled their channels from TopTV over the past two years.
The Woodmead based company hasn't told StarSat subscribers in South Africa why the channels suddenly disappeared.
Meanwhile StarTimes subscribers in African countries like Kenya are wondering why FX is simply gone.
A StarSat spokesperson told TV with Thinus on Thursday morning following a media enquiry, that the missing FOX channels "is a technical problem which we are working on".
StarSat says the problem is with the service provider who provides the fibre link in Europe. "They are working on the problem with a good deal of urgency". StarSat says an estimated time for when the problem will be fixed and the FOX channels restored, is not available.
FOX International Channels (FIC) and FOX International Channels Africa (FIC Africa) which supply the channels to StarSat in South Africa and to StarTimes in Africa has also not made any public statement about the blank channels and also didn't communicate immediately to FOX viewers who can no longer see their channels on StarSat.
FIC Africa, in response to a media enquiry made Thursday morning, referred media enquiries directly to StarSat. FIC Africa said StarSat has to be asked about the missing FOX channels since "they are the platform who did not have a signal".
The FOX blackout is the next subscriber mishap hitting StarSat in 2014. StarSat subscribers have been furious about technical problems following a transponder uplinking change which saw subscribers who had to change decoder settings, the loss of TV channels, and a degradation of TV channels in video and audio quality.
