SKY viewers in Australia and New Zealand have lost their TV service following a snag on the broadcaster's satellite.

Tens of thousands of TV viewers lost their signal at around 7pm on Thursday night ("Down Under" time) and at the moment there is no estimate as to when the service will be up and running again.

In a notice on Sky's New Zealand website, the broadcaster apologised for the loss of service "resulting from an outage on the Optus B1 Satellite that provides SKY's signal".

It went on: "The satellite signal was lost after a routine positioning procedure to the satellite by Optus. This effectively meant that the SKY transmission signal was lost to New Zealand and to Australian customers.

"Optus immediately acknowledged the problem and set about its correction. The satellite is communicating correctly with Optus ground stations. Optus has commenced a 're-pointing' manoeuvre to correct the signal."

Strewth - no Sky TV? That's harsh. ®