Scary Studios

[secondchoice]

A lot of “smaller” stations had studios located at the tower. I have worked a couple in the past. Even with a large metal tower directly attached to the building I always felt that the equipment was a better “target” for lightning. Of course I tried to stay off the phone and out of the transmitter room during thunderstorms. There were a couple of times my hair would “tingle” a couple of seconds before the big boom and everything went dark and we were off the air.



I never worked the old WLAC FM studio but I took a cart up there once. It was on the top (30th) floor of the Life and Casualty building in Nashville. That is not tall by New York or Chicago standards but it was the tallest or second tallest building in Nashville at the time and you could literally see for miles from the windows up there. The studio had a mostly glass wall to the transmitter room. The antenna was on the roof too. I can only guess that the steel frame of the building was a “better path” for lightning. It had to loud during a thunderstorm. I am sure there are other studios locations that had to make you think twice about your safety.

 

[gr8oldies]

At my first station we had a really bad storm, with lightning you'd normally expect with locations hotter and further south. I was driving in during it, and shortly after I got on the air at this AM FM combo, we took at least one direct hit. I walk into the newsroom and the scanner is smoldering. The transmitters kicked off a couple of times but no damage there

 

[TexasTom]

I once saw an article where someone mentioned working at KMMK/KWPL 95.3 in McKinney, TX back in the eighties, and talked about having rats dropping from the ceiling while they were working. I can't remember exactly *when* they worked at the station, so not sure which set of calls it had at the time.

 

[davideduardo]

I once saw an article where someone mentioned working at KMMK/KWPL 95.3 in McKinney, TX back in the eighties, and talked about having rats dropping from the ceiling while they were working. I can't remember exactly *when* they worked at the station, so not sure which set of calls it had at the time.

Not so unusual. During my first week as GM of WUNO in San Juan, a rat rode a ceiling tile down and landed on my desk; it did not like the new environment at all and ran off. We began work on a new building a few weeks later!

 

[gr8oldies]

Not so unusual. During my first week as GM of WUNO in San Juan, a rat rode a ceiling tile down and landed on my desk; it did not like the new environment at all and ran off. We began work on a new building a few weeks later!

Never rats thankfully, but I worked at a station with quite a mouse infestation. KGRC Hannibal MO was right on the Mississippi River. It started getting colder, and they streamed in. They tried glue traps,,,,,,not good.

 

[Oldie919]

We had a mouse problem at a station I worked for in central NH back in the '70s...
The boss set several of the "spring" traps, baited with cheese, around the building....including the newsroom.....
Sure enough, one early morning, during a live newscast, a trap was sprung.....
The open mic caught the poor mouse in his death throes...!!

 

[Kent]

I once saw an article where someone mentioned working at KMMK/KWPL 95.3 in McKinney, TX back in the eighties, and talked about having rats dropping from the ceiling while they were working. I can't remember exactly *when* they worked at the station, so not sure which set of calls it had at the time.

I worked at KLOZ 92.7 and heard horror stories like that about the old building in Eldon. By the time I had gotten there, it was at its current studio location. After Benne bought KLOZ and KQUL, he built an addition to the KQUL studios in Kaiser, near Osage Beach, and moved KLOZ there. I think that was about five years before I'd gotten there. Never had any problems like that at Hwy 42, luckily. I think the worst that ever happened there was the door between the garage and the annex where KLOZ was would occasionally open on its own. In the summer, that left the annex quite hot when it happened after the live shifts were done!

 

[Mikey Radio]

Never worked at a place with rats, but at one station they did have small "field mice" get in on occasion as the rear of the station where they'd sometimes open the back door to the production studio faced a wooded area. Those smaller mice never really did harm that I could see (no chewing of cables, equipment or insulation, no nesting in equipment or transmitters), but the ladies working there were terrified when they'd see one scurry across a room, so they usually set traps right away.

Another station I was at had the tower built next to the building that contained transmitters, studios, sales and front offices. They installed a pretty substantial lightning protection system, including copper strapping around the perimeter of the building with a number of grounding rods, but one night when the tower was struck it took us off the air for a bit, a few pieces of gear got fried and one of the older dot matrix printers started feeding paper non-stop after the jolt occurred.

 

[Kelly A]

Can't recall the AM station, don't even know it its around anymore. Overnight jock (back when that was a thing) suffered with depression, and decided he was going to end it that night. The transmitter was down the hall behind a window that faced the main hallway. The distraught jock opened the back door of the transmitter to throw himself at the mouth of high voltage. Problem was, the door interlocks shut off the HV as soon as the door opened. The jock closed the door, went around to the front panel, and turned the station back on the air. The night jock was found by the morning show having hung himself on a piece of transmission line coming from the transmitter to the phasor. Rumor was that some nights, you could see the old night jock still wandering that hallway.