by Thinus Ferreira
Sky News (DStv 402) abruptly went off-air on Friday morning while eMedia's eNCA (DStv 403) was forced to switch to filler repeats as a global Microsoft IT outage related to cybersecurity software CrowdStrike spread worldwide, shutting down broadcasters, media, banks and transportation worldwide.
It's been described as "the most serious IT outage the world has ever seen" and led to global chaos on Friday.
In South Africa, the TV news channel eNCA and Capitec bank along with Comcast's Sky News channel were the first to be noticeably affected by the shocking cyber fiasco that hit businesses from the United States and the United Kingdom to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Other South African businesses besides eMedia's eNCA which were affected by the Microsoft host mistake included Nedbank, Absa bank, FNB, Standard Bank, Airlink, South African Airways, Flysafair, and the City of Tshwane municipality including its prepaid vending system.
The crippled eNCA was forced to switch to repeat filler to pad its morning broadcast for several hours.
eMedia in response to emailed media queries about eNCA's problems on Friday said it had no comment.
eNCA sources meanwhile told TVwithThinus on Friday morning that the on-air problems and emergency decision to air reruns "was directly because of Windows being stuck".
While eNCA failed to communicate about what was wrong in its Hyde Park headquarters, Sky News immediately communicated, and issued a statement as well.
Sky News in a statement said "Sky News has not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, we apologise for the interruption. All the news is still available online, on the Sky News app, website, and across our social media accounts. We are working hard to restore all services."
On the channel, Sky News showed a filler card that reads: "We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly."
Sky News anchor Anna Jones told viewers that Sky News was "operating at minimal capacity" and was "working to imrpove" its Friday news content output.
So far the SABC and other South African TV news channel SABC News and Newzroom Afrika appear unaffected.
On Friday morning, CNBC Europe switched from its London studio to Dubai because of Microsoft's "blue screen of death".
The global IT outage continues to affect everything from airlines worldwide to railways, banks and ATMS, to media outlets, hospitals, supermarkets and even stock exchanges.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz of the American cybersecurity company, noted that the worldwide outage was not a "security incident or cyberattack" but connected "to a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts".
George Kurtz said that the mistake "has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed".
Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft spokesperson, in an emailed statement said "a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of Windows systems globally. We are actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery".
In a social media post, Troy Hunt, a security consultant, said "I don't think it's too early to call it: This will be the largest IT outage in history. This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it's actually happened this time".
The BBC reported that by 12:00 on Friday, 1 400 airline flights worldwide had been cancelled so far today.
UPDATE Friday 19 July 2024 10:20am: Sky News is back to broadcasting again but without any graphics or the lower-third banner.
eNCA went back to broadcasting live again at 09:55 with Sindy Mabe anchoring but also without any graphics or a lower-third banner and just the eNCA logo in the bottom-right corner.
A broadcast insider told me earlier on Friday morning that "we are unable to fire banners" meaning on-screen graphics and the lower-third strap usually populated by rolling headline text.
UPDATE Friday 19 July 2024 14:00: eNCA managed to return its lower-third banner and headlines scroll by 14:00 on Friday afternoon.
