PBS Outage History

We're investigating an issue where the livestream player is experiencing intermittent playback issues on web browsers on both mobile and desktop platforms. Users may report seeing the play button behaving strangely on the player, the player starting and stopping, or other issues related to playback. Because the issues are intermittent, not all viewers will encounter an issue, and refreshing the page may or may not help with playback.

Users nationwide may be prevented from opening and using the PBS app on Amazon Fire Tablet devices temporarily. This is related to a new age verification requirement that went into effect in Texas today. There is currently an issue accessing the Amazon’s backend system that verifies the Amazon account user age settings. We are working with Amazon to resolve this as quickly as possible. Until the issue is resolved, users on Amazon Fire Tablets will see a message that they need to update the device’s operating system in order to use the PBS app. Updating the app will not resolve this issue. The issue will be resolved automatically once the Amazon age system becomes accessible by the app.

We've identified an issue preventing the PBS KIDS app from loading on select platforms, with Roku and iOS (iPhones/iPads) being the most reported devices. We're currently working on resolving the issue. We're also seeing degraded performance on the pbskids.org/video site. Please follow this page for further updates.

A hotfix is planned to release tomorrow morning to address this issue. We will continue to post additional updates as needed.

PBS services are currently affected intermittently by an ongoing AWS issue. Viewers may report issues with loading pages, video playback, or other interruptions in service on on the PBS site or app. We are working with AWS to resolve the issue. Further tracking is available via AWS's Status Page: https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

We've identified an issue with video playback on the PBS app for Samsung TV, VIZIO SmartCast TV, and Comcast boxes. Users may report that videos do not complete toward the end of their runtime, and the video instead returns them to an earlier point in the video or the beginning of the video. This issue is related to a recent update made to the app on these devices on Monday, Jan. 26, and we are working to release a fix.

About 3 AM Eastern, Amazon AWS (which powers many databases including most PBS platforms) began experiencing connectivity issues and latency. This may have resulted in trouble signing in, errors when signing in, etc. It looks like this has improved somewhat in the last couple of hours, but there may still be some latency issues as Amazon continues to investigate the root cause and mitigate. We will continue to monitor. https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

We’re aware of an issue with the PBS app on Roku where users browsing between seasons of select shows will be kicked out of the app to the Roku home screen. It does not affect all shows, and users are not kicked out when going to episodes directly from the app search. We are currently testing a fix that will be included with the next app update for Roku, to be released soon.