Airwaves: February 1, 2008
It's Cold
My best friend from college, Andrew Holt, who was my partner in crime
at UCLA's student-run radio station KLA, actually made it in radio. In
his early days at small-market stations in Ohio and Pennsylvania, I used to call
him when the weather got cold to remind him what he was missing.
"It got really cold here last night," I would tell him. "It got
down to sixty degrees.
I haven't done that in a while even though I still can -- Andrew is now working
in Walla Walla, Washington doing news and sports (he should be on in Los Angeles
where he would kick butt, but that's another story). Yet the weather here last
week was cold enough for him to call me, and it caused some problems for
local radio and television stations.
Last Saturday was an especially bad day on Mt. Wilson, home of transmitters for
many Los Angeles-area FM and television stations. Ice and snow wrecked havoc
on equipment, including wireless transmitter links and transmitter equipment.
Snowy weather and icy roads made repair trips to transmitter sites impossible
or extremely difficult. Numerous stations had problems of some sort that couldn't
be easily fixed even if they were simple.
But the broadcast community is tight-knit; most engineers know each other no
matter where they work. Many are good friends. Engineering consultant John Davis
told Don Barrett's laradio.com of but one example: KKGO (105.1 FM) was
off the air because their main studio link was damaged by ice. To make things
worse, snow caused the roof of the backup transmitter to cave in, causing water
damage to the transmitter. It could have been a long time for KKGO to get back
on the air.
To the rescue was KROQ (106.7 FM) Chief Engineer Fred Holub, who
offered his station's own backup transmitter for use by KKGO. He went to Flint
Peak, switched the transmitter to 105.1, and had KKGO back on the air in very
little time. Davis said, "it was a beautiful thing he did, and I want to
publicly thank him and KROQ."
I do, too. It's easy to get lost focussing on the business of radio, but what
makes radio, especially local radio, so special are the people both in front
of the microphones and behind the scenes. Here's to the engineers who are on-call
24-hours a day so that we can hear our favorite programming: thanks for being
there, and thanks for being so willing to help each other out.
Other Problems
KKGO wasn't the only one with problems. KPFK (90.7 FM) was off the air
from Friday through much of the weekend, though they were back on the air by
Sunday. The station reported that on Saturday, after finally reaching the transmitter
the Chief Engineer found the snow so deep he couldn't get into the building and
the antenna so iced up it had to be cleared off before returning to the air.
V-100 (KRBV, 100.3 FM) was using their backup transmitter still as of
press time, along with Jack-FM (KCBS-FM, 93.1) and probably a few others.
I would expect everything to be back to relative normal by the time you read
this, or in a few days at the latest ... unless a new storm causes more problems.
///
Copyright © 2008 Richard Wagoner and Los Angeles Newspaper Group.
To subscribe to The Daily Breeze, call (310) 540-5511