# MSNBC Is Stuck **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 14, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897 "2010-01-14T05:17:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/1 "2010-01-14T05:17:41Z")
They’re rerunning tonight’s _Countdown_…or they were until the show got STUCK. Brian Williams, on the scene in Haiti, has been repeating the words _“…Aceh this evening…”_ for close to six minutes now. What the fucking fuck?! ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/2 "2010-01-14T05:23:15Z")
9 minutes and still stuck. I don’t think there’s anybody _there_ this time of night. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/3 "2010-01-14T05:29:01Z")
Going on _15_ minutes. This is hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/4 "2010-01-14T05:38:48Z")
23 minutes and counting. [Twitter](http://twitter.com/#search?q=msnbc) users are posting stuff off MSNBC as if nothing’s going wrong, which suggests it’s a problem with my cable company. Funny thing though, other channels are fine. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/5 "2010-01-14T05:50:29Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Going on _15_ minutes. > > This is hilarious. This happened once when I was watching BBC World for more than 15 minutes. I’m glad I had a camera handy, because the channel was frozen on [this](http://www.flickr.com/photos/refrozenseabass/526549511/). ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/6 "2010-01-14T07:21:44Z")
Sounds like a digital receiver at the cable head-end crashed. All TV channels are distributed via satellite. Years ago, these were analog signals that were reflected back to earth via one of the 24 transponders on any given satellite. These days, one transponder carries a much larger number of digital channels per transponder. When the signal is picked up at the head-end, the MPEG video and audio is tuned and turned into either analog signals or differently formatted digital signals. Most of the receivers have a a cache of memory to ensure uninterrupted signal. Sometimes they crash, or the input gets interrupted and the cache gets played over and over. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/7 "2010-01-15T00:21:18Z")
Flipped to MSNBC quickly about 8:30am and Brian was still at it, head jerking away like someone in a teenager’s YouTube remix. Flipped past again about 9am and normal morning programming was on. Near as I can figure, that’s over 9 1/2 hours of hiccuping receiver. Meaning Brian said “Aceh this evening” over 34,000 times. ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2010, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/msnbc-is-stuck/524897/8 "2010-01-15T01:12:56Z")
Could have been worse. It could have been stuck on [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYcCAKnPSIQ).