Terrestrial reception of the Polish public broadcaster TVP’s channels has been interrupted in a large part of the country.
Quoted by Wirtualne Media, TVP’s president Jacek Kurski said that the matter was strange and inexplicable. It had also been reported to the Public Safety Office and the Internal Security Agency may also be informed.
TVP started to receive reports from its viewers of problems receiving its services on Saturday, December 17. The problems covered all of southern and most of western Poland, in total 13 of the country’s Voivodships.
Broadband TV News notes that as of today (Monday, December 19), TVP is still asking viewers to report any problems. It also says that its channel TVP Info can be received on tvpstream.tvp.pl and on the mobile app tvp stream.
TVP’s channels are distributed by the national transmission company Emitel and in a statement it said: “On December 17 and 18, 11 of the 137 transmitters distributing MUX3 suffered a few minutes of disruption in normal transmissions due to errors in synchronisation. Disturbances occurred only at the borders of the SFN zones and affected only a small percentage of the population. Currently, intensive work on the elimination of interference is taking place”.
Broadband TV News notes that the blackout, which may not have affected as many viewers as had initally been believed, has come against the backdrop of what is a highly charged political situation in Poland.
Some have even argued that it may have been politically motivated, while others have dismissed this as completely untrue.
Update: In a statement issued on Monday, December 19 at 11.29 CET TVP says that it continues to hear from viewers and internet users having problems receiving its channels despite EmiTel having earlier said that it had rectified the problem.