I had the sound off, but I saw the picture flicker and cut out from across the room. Did that happen when it was supposed to?
When NASA was trying to put the first satellites into orbit they had tracking stations in several countries around the world. Even with all of them there were times the bird was out of range with the control center.
I believe this was true even in the days of NASA manned flights as well. Over the Indian Ocean was one of the times no communication with astronauts was available.