ITV was thrown into chaos on Monday evening after parts of its regional news output suddenly disappeared from screens, leaving viewers across the UK confused and frustrated.
Instead of the expected local bulletins, many people tuning in were met with nothing more than a floating ITV logo drifting around the screen in what some compared to an old DVD screensaver. The bizarre disruption sparked immediate reaction online, with viewers questioning what had happened and whether the fault was with their own televisions.
The broadcaster was later forced to issue a public apology after the unexpected outage interrupted local news programming in several areas. Reports suggested the regional channels were off air for around half an hour before normal service began to return, with some audiences instead seeing a repeat of The Chase.
In a clip shared by one viewer, a presenter could be heard apologising on air, saying, “Apologies to some of you who may have had an issue during the regional news a few moments ago.”
By 8pm, ITV appeared to have restored its usual schedule, while also confirming that the affected news programmes would be made available on demand for viewers who had missed them.
Addressing the incident on social media, ITV said, “Unfortunately we are currently experiencing difficulties with transmission associated with a central ITV outage across the UK. Our programme will be uploaded to our website as soon as possible which will provide our coverage of the day’s news here in the Channel Islands.”
ITV Granada also posted its own apology on X, telling viewers, “Apologies to viewers tuning in for our bulletin this evening – ITV has been experiencing technical problems and is working hard to fix the technical issues.”
As the disruption unfolded, baffled viewers shared their experiences online from different parts of the country. One person wrote, “It went in the west country for 60 seconds at most. They did apologise before main news and before The Chase for the issue.” Another said, “Just showing this, then suddenly cut into The Chase celebrity special.”
Others described a far more prolonged problem. “Meridian was off air from 6.30 until 7,” one viewer claimed, while another posted, “Looks like a full network breakdown on @ITV1 with no regional news bulletins across the whole of the UK.”
The outage appeared to affect a string of regional services including ITV Granada, Yorkshire, County Down, West Country, Tyne Tees, Meridian and Cymru. Viewers in London also said they missed their local bulletin, with one writing, “We didn’t receive the news for ITV London. It was stuck on ITV1 then cut off to the weather.”
Some admitted they initially thought the issue was happening only in their homes. One person wrote, “I’m glad it wasn’t just my TV playing up! Even changed the channel and went back and it was still there.” Another summed up the surreal moment by calling it the “bouncing DVD style ITV logo.”
The strange on-air failure quickly became a talking point, not only because of the scale of the disruption but because viewers were left watching a blank, drifting logo at one of the channel’s key evening news slots.
