A technical problem caused TVNZ's 1 News to unexpectedly cut away from their 6pm bulletin.

Tonight's 1 News was part-way through its first package on the Thai cave rescue when the piece unexpectedly dropped off air.

Hi everyone, we're getting lots of questions about our 6pm news being off the air. We've had some technical problems, but we're now back on air. Thanks for your patience.

— 1 NEWS (@1NewsNZ) July 11, 2018

Lifestyle show Kiwi Living came on air in its place for about five minutes.

Anchors Simon Dallow and Miriamo Kamo explained a technical problem was to blame for the brief outage.

"We have had a few technical problems, but we're ready to go right now," Dallow said.

Though it only lasted a few minute, the outage drew lots of attention from viewers.