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011nerve
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I think what happened is a listener just called in and requested endless commercials.
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590-KLBJ endless spots running now
- Thread starter Dondd
- Start date
No "Beautiful Music" would be public domain unless it was made up of contemporied versions of classic compositions.
Bad engineering. When I eliminated transmitter staff around 1976 at a 10 kw AM directional, we had backups on everything, including the STL, the audio processing, the remote control and the transmitter. And that was in market 31, not Houston.
Everywhere I have managed or programmed in the last 60 years we had strict instructions to continue the programming feed even if we appeared to be off the air. My learning experience came when my station had open carrier but no audio because at the studio they thought we were off the air. In fact, the problem was a loose connection to the air monitor, but since the DJ could not hear the monitor, he did nothing. Thus the rule to feed audio always as if we were on the air.
A major market station without redundant STLs (including separate antennas at both ends) and redundant audio processing seems odd in that era.
But the real issue was lack of planning and policy by management. A redundant system would have avoided that problem altogether.
I've never heard of a "discrepancy meeting" for such a situation. Maybe at an organization with hundreds of employees, but not the typical commercial station or cluster.
Usually the manager will find out sooner or later, and talk to the relative department heads and ask "what caused it?" and then, "how do we avoid it in the future?"
A review of the log will tell traffic about the lost spots and traffic will determine if any lost spots are eligible for make-goods and schedule them. If the make good is several day later, traffic will check the orders to make sure the copy and the contract both "work" on that date.
And both traffic and the manager will not bill for any of them as it is unlikely that anyone was listening after the 10th or 15th spot. It would not be ethical to bill. But it is likely that the PPM data in Austin for that day and time period would be looked at to see the impact of the lost listening.
I'd like to think a manager is assigned to be on-call for a holiday. Based on the length of time it took to correct, it sounds like someone had to drive in to reset the automation. If it was a simple programming fix, it likely could have been done remotely.
Again, you are thinking of a depth of management that does not exist in commercial radio today.
The problem sounds more like an issue of inadequate planning. Today's automation as well as transmitters and STLs and audio processing can all be accessed remotely and adjusted or transferred to auxiliary options as needed.
But in most cases, transfers should happen automatically. In this case, audio was being fed, but it was the wrong audio. A quick guess would tell me that the commercial log was "stuck" and not sequencing back to the program log. "Unsticking" should be doable from anywhere, and in most cases even on a smartphone.
What does appear to have happened is that nobody noticed the issue on a holiday morning. This is the kind of failure that seldom will trigger any kind of alarm; no matter how many people are "on call" unless someone is listening there is no response and no action. No dead air, no loss of carrier. I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can not do that.
It's a five station cluster in a Top 40 market. I know similar clusters that assign someone to be on call. Then again, this is Sinclair, and radio is not their thing, so who knows.
A good example is the recent assignment of a sales specialist as head of iHeart operations in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and Huntsville, AL. Here we have nobody in the middle between a multi-market manager and the station department heads except, maybe, an OM who also does programming. There is no multi-tier depth in most situations, even in markets as big as LA and New York.
And, again, most functions in studios (traffic and music logs and the overall system that integrates them and sends the output to the transmitter) and transmitters (audio processing, transmitters, antenna switches, auxiliary power, STL, security, etc.).
This was a rare case where everything technical was working but something in the software command structure did not know when to go back to programming from the commercial log. It required someone actually listening to hear the problem and take action... which could have been done in a minute or two on a tablet or iPhone.
My guess to what happened is there was supposed to be a best-of or prerecorded show airing in place of the morning show and without the “segments” in the log, it was running through the breaks.
That, or perhaps something was supposed to be live with a fill-in host remotely, the connection was lost, and the board-op was filling as best they could.
It’s Murphy’s Radio Law: whatever can go wrong, will go wrong on a holiday!
That, or perhaps something was supposed to be live with a fill-in host remotely, the connection was lost, and the board-op was filling as best they could.
It’s Murphy’s Radio Law: whatever can go wrong, will go wrong on a holiday!
We should point out that KLBJ and its Austin cluster siblings are owned by Sinclair Telecable, doing business as Waterloo Media Group. They are a different company than Sinclair Broadcast Group, best known for its TV station shenanigans.
Either way, it shows a sloppy, slip-shod operation with little attention to the end product.
Clearly, the listeners aren't really that important to that station's management, just the spot load.
This isn't the only time such snafus have occurred. I've heard other stations go on endless spot loops.
One Saturday night around 7 p.m. in the 1990s, when tornado sirens were blaring, nearly all of the local stations in a medium-sized market were breaking-in with weather coverage. The music stations that didn't really do news simulcast local TV or the AM news-full service station. Except one. The "Magic 107 FM" kept running John Tesh and kept listeners in ignorance.
In Kansas City during the 1990s, one station reported the weather as "... and the temperature in Dallas is..."
That blunder was reported in the Kansas City Star.
Clearly, the listeners aren't really that important to that station's management, just the spot load.
This isn't the only time such snafus have occurred. I've heard other stations go on endless spot loops.
One Saturday night around 7 p.m. in the 1990s, when tornado sirens were blaring, nearly all of the local stations in a medium-sized market were breaking-in with weather coverage. The music stations that didn't really do news simulcast local TV or the AM news-full service station. Except one. The "Magic 107 FM" kept running John Tesh and kept listeners in ignorance.
In Kansas City during the 1990s, one station reported the weather as "... and the temperature in Dallas is..."
That blunder was reported in the Kansas City Star.
Who's the one who pays? You or the advertiser?
I am not a fan of KLBJ-AM but I am a sometimes listener. I am way to the left of them so I only listen to the garden shows and Coast To Coast AM. I was listening to Coast To Coast that night (the night that you are discussing) before the 8:00 AM timeframe. I left my radio on all night and I am 99.999% sure that KLBJ-AM was off the air (no signal at all) from about 5:45 AM to 8:00 AM that morning.
I did not know that total perfection is required in broadcasting. I guess I wasted the last 60 or so years, as I've made my share of mistakes and blunders.
I'll never live down when I cued up an album at 45 rpm. Or IDed the station at 92.3 as "ninety poo point pee" or announced the latest "erection results were coming up".
That's just a few of 'em. I could fill a page or two. And so could every radio professional. We are human.
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I think that really identifies where the hole was. Either the morning show producer failed to enter a best-of/backup show in the automation, or they did and the automation didn't see it.
That's about my extent of listening to the one-sided "we're always right !! " "The Dems are always wrong !! " station.
And this coming from a LONGTIME talk radio listener, who consumed a lot of conservative talk, but one who remembers a better talk radio when every.single.show wasn't about politics all day, all night.
Heck, I know a guy who's been in the business for decades who did an entire Monday morning airshift using Tuesday's traffic log just the other day.
These things happen.
I'll be brief, to avoid belaboring the point. There was a veneer of professionalism at KTRH and KLOL in those days, but it was still a family-owned operation with many of the limitations that come in such an environment. The GM had been a PD elsewhere; the PD had been an administrative assistant (as we would now say). That GM tended not to know what he didn't know and also appeared to spend much of his time managing upwards. The family member who presided over the stations was also relatively new. Most of the expertise and experience was in the news department, and, to be honest, many journalists don't have audio technical skills as their strength. (This doesn't answer the question of whether they should but speaks to the reality of the situation.) The station was between NDs when this incident happened.
My radio career was briefer than that for many here (10 years), all spent in family-run operations, and all deficient in various ways. So I'm amused by people who complain about "corporate radio" and consolidation. Certainly that hasn't been entirely a good thing, but corporations at least have systems in place and support functions to maintain business continuity as well as handling other functions such as human resources.
A personal irony is that business continuity is considered by some to be a cybersecurity function (when I did my certifications, I had to answer questions on the subject!). There's some theoretical agreement on this point but as a practical matter, in many companies, the functions are separate, though complimentary and with frequent collaboration.
I was near The Domain over the weekend and went by the KVET site on Metric. Still no signs of any site prep work for KLBJ's new tower.
I would not be surprised if this never actually ends up getting built and KLBJ eventually lands on one of the full power signals and 99.7 is then repurposed, perhaps even with Lucy if it is still going at that point. Just a guess though.
I would not be surprised if this never actually ends up getting built and KLBJ eventually lands on one of the full power signals and 99.7 is then repurposed, perhaps even with Lucy if it is still going at that point. Just a guess though.
Robert Douglas
Banned
You seem to be thinking that 590 would go dark! That would be very sad indeed.
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