An unsolved mystery...

[sam_gordon]

Redundancy?!?! Ha! That went away at my last station with the digital switch. They didn't want to spend the money. So when our network last had the Super Bowl, which of course is a HIGH REVENUE program, they brought in a Live Truck operator to establish a microwave shot from the station to the transmitter, and had an engineer at the transmitter so that if something happened to the fixed link to the transmitter, they could switch to the Live Truck signal.
That station didn't even upgrade their backup transmitter to digital because "the main transmitter will never go down and besides nobody watched over the air anymore anyway" Boy, has that changed in recent years as people cut the cord. The main transmitter is at the site of our 2,000 foot tower. They still are part owners of the old 1,500 foot tower but do not keep a transmitter there.

Varies by the station & group. Some have fully redundant EVERYTHING... two transmitters, two antennas, two sources to the transmitter, etc. One station I had visited had two generators, each capable of powering the studio building. "Why two?" we asked. "In case the first one fails." That seems over kill to me.

Redundancy is nothing more than insurance. You hope you never need it, but when you do, it can save you a lot of money.

 

[sam_gordon]

But another article I read on the incident mentioned line of site so they would've needed to be on the top of the tower or in a high rise apartment nearby.

"Line of sight" is a figure of speech. It has nothing to do with how far one can see, but how the RF travels. Depending on where the station's studios are, you could have a transmitter on a roof building (doesn't necessarily need to be a high rise).

Regardless, it probably wasn't as difficult as one would think.

 

[tvguy]

Varies by the station & group. Some have fully redundant EVERYTHING... two transmitters, two antennas, two sources to the transmitter, etc. One station I had visited had two generators, each capable of powering the studio building. "Why two?" we asked. "In case the first one fails." That seems over kill to me.

Redundancy is nothing more than insurance. You hope you never need it, but when you do, it can save you a lot of money.

The lack of an engineer in the building made me laugh. My last station went to a hub so the MCR operator is 3,000 miles away. They have had failures in the middle of the night and the morning news Producer had to be talked through...... over the phone.......how to make changes to a piece of equipment to get the station back on the air.
Generators? LOL. My first station finally got one, but not big enough to run the whole building. First power outage we found out it was wired backwards. It only powered the business, administration and sales portions of the building, and not MCR, the studios or the newsroom!

 

[sam_gordon]

The lack of an engineer in the building made me laugh. My last station went to a hub so the MCR operator is 3,000 miles away. They have had failures in the middle of the night and the morning news Producer had to be talked through...... over the phone.......how to make changes to a piece of equipment to get the station back on the air.
Generators? LOL. My first station finally got one, but not big enough to run the whole building. First power outage we found out it was wired backwards. It only powered the business, administration and sales portions of the building, and not MCR, the studios or the newsroom!

The cost of keeping an engineer on site 24/7 is generally cost prohibitive. Having one "on call" and within 30 minutes of the station I think is the "norm" now.
I've talked LOTS of people through problems over the phone, and I was less than 30 minutes away.

Putting in a too small generator was a conscious decision. Having the generator support the non-broadcast side of the building was a conscious decision.

At my old station, we put in a smaller than needed generator (repurposed from our transmitter), but only after consulting electricians on whether it would/what would it power.

It sounds like you were at a poorly run station. Not all are like that.

I was at a station last month that had a power outage and no generator. You sit in the dark, wait for power to come on, then get equipment running again. NBD.

 

[tvguy]

The cost of keeping an engineer on site 24/7 is generally cost prohibitive. Having one "on call" and within 30 minutes of the station I think is the "norm" now.
I've talked LOTS of people through problems over the phone, and I was less than 30 minutes away.

Putting in a too small generator was a conscious decision. Having the generator support the non-broadcast side of the building was a conscious decision.

At my old station, we put in a smaller than needed generator (repurposed from our transmitter), but only after consulting electricians on whether it would/what would it power.

It sounds like you were at a poorly run station. Not all are like that.

I was at a station last month that had a power outage and no generator. You sit in the dark, wait for power to come on, then get equipment running again. NBD.

Actually, it was (and is) one of the best run TV stations in the nation. They just got caught in a mess because the contractor their hired to build new studios went bankrupt halfway through the project. My last station had a HUGE diesel generator that powered the entire building, and THAT was a problem in California because due to air pollution control rules there are strict limits on how long you can run it to test it, which you need to do monthly. It is supposed to be used only when the power is out. Which is why the second station I worked at.....which had a huge diesel generator too.......took it out when they remodeled in 2005 and put in a huge array of batteries that allegedly would power the whole building for a couple of days. It went online after I left, but it is supposed to be seamless because the building is never running on shore power, it always is running off the batteries with shore power keeping them charged. Same way phone company central offices work.

 

[prairie_girl]

My theory is that this thread is an admission

 

[Lord Manhammer]

My theory is that this thread is an admission

LOL you give me entirely too much credit considering I was eleven years old when this happened. I’m good but I’m not that good.

 

[tvguy]

LOL you give me entirely too much credit considering I was eleven years old when this happened. I’m good but I’m not that good.

Prime suspect with your Heath Kit microwave transmitter.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

Remember when it happened. It's referenced in Ready Player One.

 

[gmi3804]

And not long ago, we were spellbound by what naughty words we could spell on a
Calculator…

And upside down!

I had to wait until today to prevent spoilers, but here’s yesterday’s New York Times “Connections” solution. It was “BOOB that tipped me off.” Touché.