Sky News has unexpectedly dropped off-air midway through the CBS News, due to an apparent technical problem.

What appears to be some kind of video server crash, happened at 00:52 during the nightly live broadcast of America's 'CBS News' programme.

Viewers tuning into the channel will see a shaking image of an animated scene, bearing the usual Sky News DOG and the time.

The video from CBS News was visable via Sky News Active, but without sound.

No other Sky channels appear to be affected, but the entire Sky.com website is down. It is not known if the two incidents are connected.

You can follow the progress of the technical hitch in the Digital Spy Satellite Forum, here

UPDATE: Sky News has returned to regular programming at 01:15. Programming resumed part-way through the headlines, suggesting Sky News were unaware of the fault. Sky News quickly went to commercial break, however, when they returned the presenter was clearly confused and sat nervously looking at the camera and the studio around him for several seconds.