iHeart cuts engineers

[kenglish]

What happens when the transmitter site loses it's internet connection(s)?

An old Marti RPU, and the station's vintage remote van, complete with turntables and rotating "Sheriff Andy" cop car lights.
There's good reason for keeping the plates current on that old Econoline.

 

[davideduardo]

What happens when the transmitter site loses it's internet connection(s)?

Interesting coincidence is the reporting today of a severe outage affecting over 100,000 Internet customers in the Salt Lake City metro. We already have a thread about it on RadioDiscussions.

 

[Kelly A]

What happens when the transmitter site loses it's internet connection(s)?

Same as when your single STL path dies. At least there is the ability to have more than one ISP into the TX site, assuming one is available.
I ran a backup video over IP connection between Dubai, UAE to Virginia over the public Internet for over ten years. Never went down once. Just the cost savings of not having studios, capital equipment, or offices alone, would make up for any potential lost revenue in a given year should you lose Internet.

 

[kenglish]

KSL-TV and the Bonneville radio stations have backup studio facilities at each transmitter site. These include cameras, 2-way radio, radio RPU, digital TV ENG, and telephone interfaces. In a long-term outage, small production vans and even full HDTV production trucks can be called in, so the entire studio could be replicated at a hotel or in a similar facility. A couple of hours of sustaining programming are available at each transmitter, on the DAD system (recycled) computers from the last upgrade.

 

[Kelly A]

Interesting coincidence is the reporting today of a severe outage affecting over 100,000 Internet customers in the Salt Lake City metro. We already have a thread about it on RadioDiscussions.

That's why you have two different providers with BGP tables in your transmitter site router to move traffic if one path goes down.

 

[Kelly A]

Oh, and another recent backup option that I'll personally be testing in a couple months: SpaceX Starlink satellite Internet. I'm signed up to be a beta tester starting in May. If works as promised, Starlink would be an excellent, cost effective primary or backup path for virtual STL application.

 

[davideduardo]

That's why you have two different providers with BGP tables in your transmitter site router to move traffic if one path goes down.

I'm curious about less urban areas and I don't have much smaller market experience: how much of the US has more than one provider available.

And... isn't there some physical vulnerability beyond the providers in "the last mile" which can be very susceptible to physical damage from storms to a drunk hitting a power pole with their car.

I can see the Starlink being an option, but is it priced accessibly for small market or smaller metro stations? That sounds marvelous... do you know Starlink's footprint? And is it bi-directional? A lot of us have gone through the STL with a return on the station signal and know what a pain that is if the transmitter is down and the aux won't obey the remote sequence.

SBE should do one of the monthly video sessions just about STL redundancy in the post-leased lines era.

 

[davideduardo]

KSL-TV and the Bonneville radio stations have backup studio facilities at each transmitter site. These include cameras, 2-way radio, radio RPU, digital TV ENG, and telephone interfaces. In a long-term outage, small production vans and even full HDTV production trucks can be called in, so the entire studio could be replicated at a hotel or in a similar facility. A couple of hours of sustaining programming are available at each transmitter, on the DAD system (recycled) computers from the last upgrade.

How many radio operations can afford such an investment and cover the ongoing maintenance costs? I suspect that if KSL did not have TV "in the house" they would not be able to have such a facility.

I remember Arch Madsen talking to me about the backup facilities at the Bonneville stations over dinner one night in Quito during an Interamerican Association of Broadcasters meeting. They obviously have a long history of such emergency facilities.

 

[Kelly A]

I can see the Starlink being an option, but is it priced accessibly for small market or smaller metro stations? That sounds marvelous... do you know Starlink's footprint? And is it bi-directional? A lot of us have gone through the STL with a return on the station signal and know what a pain that is if the transmitter is down and the aux won't obey the remote sequence.

Unlike crappy DirectWay, Blue or other crappy satellite providers, Starlink promised minimum 50Mpbs up and down, with latency that matches traditional land line Internet providers. I'm not sure what the per month rate is yet, because they're just starting beta roll out. It's supposed to be affordable, intended for rural or under privileged locations.
One would only need at the most 300kpbs for audio going both ways. You could also stack remote control, site web cameras, alarm monitoring, and even VoIP phone service to the site and still have plenty of bits left.

 

[kenglish]

The backup gear at KSL-AM is fairly minimal, and can take a signal from the FM's and TV on the mountain. The FM's on the mountain can crossfeed each other, and take audio from TV. Most of the signals up there just tap in to the existing relays between sites. We got some of the stuff new, some second-hand from other projects. That 3-channel video encoder was the most expensive purchase.

Did Arch show you the "Doomsday Antenna" at the downtown studio? Man, the landlord and city both hated it. It was a loop of copper strap inside of grey PVC pipe, ten feet above the roofline. Wooden supports, anchored to cement filled cinder-blocks. As it aged, it sagged terribly.
The only thing that kept it up for so long was "We're part of the Emergency Broadcast System!"
Arch was a great guy.

 

[davideduardo]

Arch was a great guy.

I never visited Arch in SLC. At the '67 or '68 broadcaster's meeting in Quito where I was duped into coordination because "I was bilingual" (file under "Never Volunteer for Anything" or "NEVA") I met Arch and ended up taking him and his wife in our station car (a stiff and bumpy 4-wheel drive) to Santo Domingo de los Colorados to see the jungle town and its unusual native American residents and the busiest banana shipping point in the universe.

Over the two days, we got to know him and his wife, and they were marvelous, wonderful people.

The Canadian delegate, whose name escapes me, owned stations in New Brunswick. He also had hotels in Barbados, and invited us to visit (a very nice comp!) the next winter. Met some wonderful broadcasters at that convention.

 

[kenglish]

I remember a Congressman questioning the budget for the international stations. He wanted to know why the "Broadcasting Board of Governors" needed nine Range Rovers. He had this idea that there were some pompous guys in robes and powdered wigs, wanting to be chauffeured around in fancy cars.
Someone had to take him aside and explain that they were to carry engineers and technicians across dunes and marshes at tower sites where roads don't exist.
Arch was a member of the BBG Board of Directors.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I'm curious about less urban areas and I don't have much smaller market experience: how much of the US has more than one provider available.

And... isn't there some physical vulnerability beyond the providers in "the last mile" which can be very susceptible to physical damage from storms to a drunk hitting a power pole with their car.

My experience in smaller markets is that the properties outside of town where transmitters tend to be often have zero wire-line internet services. Close enough to a town of significant size, two providers is reasonable, usually one cable and one DSL.

The beauty of a setup like Kelly describes is that you don't need 99.999% up time on the internet service the way you would with a traditional STL. If there's a one hour connection outage, the worst case is that your jock's voice tracks can't be uploaded and the computer will keep running the log. If there's a one day outage, the worst case is that the computer repeats the previous day's programming, or someone has to physically take a USB key to the transmitter building to update the log.

I would probably be comfortable with one wire-line provider and one wireless provider (Verizon/AT&T, or fixed-point wireless).

At my home, I have two cable providers available. Both have had catastrophic failures, but never have they both had catastrophic failures at the same time, with the exception of the time a small tornado damaged a lot of poles nearby. That was fixed in less than 24 hours.

 

[Syfy]

Dumb question, Kelly has been a station owner, long time engineer and currently with a major engineering operation in the DC area.

I apologize I honestly did not know.