Techniques and mechanisms described herein facilitate the management of encoders for live media content streams. A media content system may employ potentially many encoders to encode potentially many live media content streams. When supporting many live media content streams, there may be some channels that are not being viewed by anyone at a particular time. In some such situations, an encoder encoding a live media content stream that is not being viewed may be disabled. Then, live media content associated with the live media content stream may be stored in a buffer and updated as new live media content is received. When a user transmits a request to view a channel for which the encoder has been disabled, an encoder for the requested channel may be enabled. The buffered data may be used to quickly initialize the encoder.