North Otago rugby fans miss out on free-to-air All Blacks

Waitaki residents hoping to catch the live free-to-air broadcast of the first big All Blacks game of the Rugby World Cup on TV3 were out of luck. File photo / Thinkstock

Rugby fans in the north Otago town of Waitaki looking forward to watching the All Blacks v France game on their analogue sets at the weekend were gravely disappointed.

A failure in the transmitter on Cape Wansbrow on Friday meant TV3 has been off the air ever since for analogue viewers.

Residents owning Sky or Freeview were not affected by the failure.

TV3 was the only free-to-air channel to show the All Blacks game live in the area.

Today's Technology, the company that runs the transmitter, said it tried its best to get TV3 back on air and the timing of the failure was "really, really, really unfortunate".

Steve, a spokesman for the company who did not want his surname printed, said the transmitter underwent a routine power cycle on Friday but it did not turn on again.

Replacement parts have been ordered and hopefully the problem will be solved this week, he said.

"People don't need to adjust their sets," he said. The problem will be repaired by the company and TV3 will come back on air afterwards.

Steve said he attempted to contact the television company about the problem but did not receive a response until after the big game was over.

Today's Technology received numerous complaints about the signal loss.

"If I could have had them all over to watch the game on the Freeview in my lounge I would have," Steve said. "But there were so many calls that the lounge would have been packed to bursting."