I'm pretty sure iHeart happened in Hartford on Labor Day Monday during morning drive on The River 105.9 WHCN. I swear we had the station on for 15 minutes and they were playing nothing but commercials along with promos for the iHeart Music Radio Festival. After 15 minutes my Mom changed the station.
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Technical problems
- Thread starter sacredcod
- Start date
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to need to have “ears on” 24/7, or in any day part for that matter. Transmitter remote control systems can be programmed to send text or email when certain events occur. Professional grade receivers designed for broadcast use can trigger a relay closure on loss of carrier and/or audio. There are Internet receivers which can be programmed to monitor a station’s stream and, again, trigger a relay closure on loss-of-signal.
The only “no excuse” there is, is not having proper monitoring equipment set up. With staff engineers handling multiple station and streams at once, the only way to minimize dead air is to have these systems in place.
As for computers: Most radio software, with several notable exceptions, run on Windows. Having backups and scheduled restarts will minimize problems.
And…I realize that not every station has the equipment budget to do all of this, so the ability to put such systems in place becomes an ROI equation. IHR can presumably afford it, but stations like the one Some Radio Guy works at, maybe not so much.
Years ago WMWM--someone entered in wrong date for automation so it played all PSAs on file then dead air.
Monitoring: in Hartford area once a Yankees game got called off due to rain. They said their goodbyes then WPOP kept simulcasting WCBS (at the time) and for awhile 880s all news format ran on 1410.
Then it abruptly switched to an all sports network--board op must have shown up or woken up, or fixed remotely.
GoToMyBoardOp...
[PC]
Monitoring: in Hartford area once a Yankees game got called off due to rain. They said their goodbyes then WPOP kept simulcasting WCBS (at the time) and for awhile 880s all news format ran on 1410.
Then it abruptly switched to an all sports network--board op must have shown up or woken up, or fixed remotely.
GoToMyBoardOp...
[PC]
Talk 1200 is glitching like crazy today.
How would "painting" the transmitter help anything? Seems like it would cause more harm than good.
Gee, did anyone die when WRKO had an evening technical problem? Nope. Just a handful of radio nerds become outraged.
Everyone, return to your homes. Nothing to see here.
Betcha' that this meant "painting the tower(s)". Obviously, someone who does not know what "transmitter" means... not unusual for listeners not involved in the business.
Sure, but still don't understand how even a layperson would think paint would improve performance.
I've never heard of a transmitter needing to be painted. Do you mean "the towers" or something else?
This is a 50kw AM transmitter. It does not need painting.
Attachments
Tell that to the makers of nail polish.
Or lipstick on a pig?
"An evening technical problem"????? You blow it off as if it's the new norm. At both Talk1200 and WRKO, "evening technical problems" abound (see below). I hope you don't work in radio, because it sounds as if you expect listeners to just roll with this.
Examples: dead air for minutes at a time; double airings; 'BZ news reports NOT updated, repeated for hours and hours; "Flash of Lightning" audio clips that are MONTHS out of date. Now why do I get the impression that the program controller and/or the overnight servers are not well cared for?
And, no, we "laypersons" know the difference between a transmitter and an antenna, especially as to WHICH gets painted.
"Fix it"? That would be nice, now.
Why shouldn't you just roll with it? There are lots of things one can do with their time other than become upset because some radio station had a problem with a file or playlist. Stuff happens.
One has to remember, that nights represent little to no source of revenue to most group stations. That's why as has been mentioned here; probably 99% don't bother staffing nights and weekends. If the station goes silent, a silence detector likely calls someone's cell phone who then either tunnels in remotely from a laptop, or in the worst case, may have to drive in. Depending on the situation, all that takes time. Also, it's not like you'll never listen to the station ever again, so these things too must pass.
Ah, and even if either were painted, how would that improve the reliability of a night playlist?
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More than likely a log/playlist issue. Could be a corrupted file, or errant entry. It happens.
Way funny! Some tuning shacks have windows. Are they clean?
FWIW, Isn't the tower painting a very strict and expensive (FAA) aviation reg.? Yup.
Federal Standard 12197 International Orange ANA 508 (Aviation Orange) and White of course.
I remember one Sunday afternoon when WHYN Springfield was still on the Red Sox network and a spring training game, set to start at 1:00, was rained out. At 1:00, WHYN started airing a recorded looped announcement about the rainout that also included a phone number for engineers at the affiliates to call! This obviously was not meant to air, but unattended WHYN let it run for at least 20 minutes.
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