MUMBAI: Star News faced a transponder problem late Sunday night, which was resolved only early this morning at 6 am. The news channel uplinks from India via the Thaicom transponder to the Asiasat 3 satellite.
The hitch was with the Thaicom transponder, which broke down late last night and being a weekend, took a while to get fixed. Shekhar Suman's Poll Khol was the show that lost out as a result of this.
Star News uplinks through the Videsh Sanchar Nigam's Ltd.'s gateway in Mumbai to an Insat satellite from where it would be downlinked at Star's Hong Kong headquarters. The final product, in a digital format, would then be again uplinked to Asiasat 3 satellite for beam back into India and the neighbouring areas where it can be downlinked by MSOs and cable operators for further re-distribution.
Star News brand director Keertan Adhayantaya says, "Since it was a weekend, the problem took some time to get resolved. We usually have a back-up plan ready for such unforeseen problems. On our part, the effort is always such that the channel doesn't get affected. But since it was a Sunday, it took longer."
As a result of this break down, the news channel lost about an hour of advertising moolah, but Adhayantaya was confident that the channel would recover this loss in the next couple of days.
The other channels that were also affected by this were music channels etc and SS Music.
All the other Star channels uplink from Hong Kong as each sends in the programme tapes to the head office. Star News is the only channel on the Star Network that uplinks from India.