Channel 4 was found to have breached the conditions of its broadcast licence by failing to provide enough subtitled programming to some viewers in autumn 2021.
An investigation by the media regulator Ofcom concluded that Channel 4, which is under threat of privatisation, breached its licence conditions when a fire alarm caused sonic boom to damage computer servers.
The media reported that it took until November for services to be fully restored, with hard-of-hearing and deaf viewers finding it difficult to follow many programmes in the meantime.
Ofcom reported that on the evening of 25 September, a fire alarm activated at a broadcast centre run by Red Bee Media, a private company that specialises in “playout” services for British broadcasters.
The fire alarm system was designed to quickly reduce the oxygen level in the area through the release of nitrogen gas that is stored under high pressure. Ofcom found that this also created a sonic boom that damaged many computer servers beyond repair.
The media reported that the BBC and Channel 5 were also affected by the fire alarm incident but were able to restore services relatively quickly by using well-established backup procedures. However, Channel 4 ran into delays because it maintained its own disaster recovery facility that was not ready to provide subtitling and audio description services.
Ofcom noted the incident was “unprecedented” but found the “prolonged outage” of the broadcaster’s subtitling, signing and audio descriptions meant Channel 4 service “fell short of the statutory requirement to subtitle 90 per cent of its programme hours over 2021 on the Freesat service”.
The media watchdog said it also found the broadcaster had breached another licence condition by failing to effectively communicate with those affected audiences after the incident.
A statement by the broadcaster said: “Channel 4 is very disappointed with Ofcom’s decision and will review its findings carefully. We would like to apologise once again to our audiences for the disruption to our access services following the catastrophic incident last September and since then we have implemented a number of new systems and processes to avoid a serious incident in the future.”
