The ABC’s national radio services were hit by a major unexpected outage for more than 90 minutes on Monday morning, with Radio National’s flagship RN Breakfast affected on both analogue and streaming services.
Radio National was restored at about 9.30am AEDT, but ABC technicians were still working on other services mid-morning on Monday after an apparent technical glitch hit at about 8am.
The ABC said the outage also affected national services ABC Classic, ABC News Radio and Triple J, but most local radio stations remained broadcasting and online.
At 9.30am, Triple J and ABC in the Upper Hunter had not yet been restored.
“The ABC is aware of an issue which began after 8am AEDT this morning and is impacting some ABC audio services,” an ABC spokesperson said.
“The ABC has identified the issue and services are beginning to be restored. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
By Monday evening, the ABC said it had restored most audio services that suffered outages, although work was still underway on any continuing disruption as well as the underlying causes.
“We became aware of outages impacting broadcast and digital apps about 8am AEDT. This is understood to have resulted from updates to the core router which provides audio from the studios to the transmitters and digital services.”"
Sources said the switching control systems in radio master control in Sydney malfunctioned and resulted in the system going offline.
Programs and radio networks coming out of other state capitals, such as Melbourne, were not affected.
The outage affected radio on TV and digital radio as well as streaming.
Listeners were informed by the following message on ABC online: “ABC is aware of a significant outage affecting multiple national ABC radio stations including ABC Radio National, ABC Classic, ABC News Radio and Triple J. We are working to resolve the issues.
“There is currently no timeline for a fix. You do not need to contact us regarding this outage, we appreciate your patience. Local radio stations are unaffected and in the meantime you can tune in with your local ABC radio station.”
