‘Fire suppression systems’ cause channel outage from Red Bee Media playout centre in London

A fire alarm at a west London broadcast centre on Saturday night caused six TV channels to suffer an outage across the country.

Channel 4, along with its sister channels More 4, Film 4 and 4 Music, were down for more than an hour, while Channel 5 was briefly impacted for a shorter period of time. 

Staff from BBC One and BBC Two were also in the building that was being evacuated, but they were being transmitted from Salford with only their continuity announcements being affected. 

The transmission centre is operated by Red Bee Media, which stated on social media:  “We confirm that all staff at our Broadcast Centre in West London were safely evacuated following activation of the fire suppression systems this evening. London Fire Brigade attended the scene, and once they had determined that the building is safe, people were allowed to return to the building. We are continuing to work to restore all services and remedy any issues caused by this incident.”

The company ultimately blamed an “activation of the fire suppression systems” at the London broadcast centre.