A power outage took the National News of Cuban Television (NTV) off the air on Monday, September 7, when the signal was abruptly cut and replaced by propaganda content for several minutes, according to a video shared on X by independent journalist Magdiel Jorge Castro.
According to reports from people close to the area, the cause was the explosion of an electrical transformer in the vicinity of the television studios.
In the footage recorded before the cut, the presenter can be heard discussing the 34th edition of the International Book Fair in Holguín and a note about the educational process in Guantánamo.
"A new blackout took the regime's television news off the air... the signal switched to communist propaganda for several minutes. Reports from the area indicate that a transformer exploded near the television studios," Castro wrote when posting the video.
The incident occurred on one of the worst days of September regarding electrical service. That Monday, the National Electric System reported only 1,160 MW of availability at 6:00 am, compared to a demand of 2,790 MW, with 1,630 MW already affected since early morning. For peak hours, the Electric Union projected an impact of 2,220 MW, which ultimately reached 2,120 MW at 8:40 pm.
This is not the first time that NTV has experienced this type of interruption in 2026. On August 30, an electrical failure in the central studios forced an announcer to apologize on air: "Greetings, unfortunately there was an electrical failure in the central studios of Cuban television," she said.
At the beginning of June, the news broadcast experienced a 15-minute interruption during its transmission. The journalist from Univisión, Daniel Benítez, reported that the NTV had to replace the signal with music and informational segments while the interruption lasted. In July, the crisis also left the entire province of Matanzas without radio and television signals.
In Havana, an average of 25 electrical transformers are damaged each day, with instances of more than 60 faulty units; out of 1,500 transformers examined, 755 were operating overloaded. The explosions of distribution equipment have become a daily phenomenon across the Island.
Voices from within the state media apparatus have broken the silence. Jeannette Juaristi Torres, a director connected to the ICRT and Canal Habana, published a viral complaint in which she rejected the idea that the embargo was the main cause of the crisis: "We are dying alive, without dreams, without hopes," she wrote, adding that "it is not all the fault of the blockade, and they know it."
The Electric Union has predicted that power outages will continue with no solution in sight until December 2026, which forebodes further interruptions for a state television that can no longer guarantee electricity even for its own broadcasts.
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