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Dial Global Crash

L

listner1

Anyone else driven nuts this past week when Dial Global crashed their entire distribution system? I had 6 stations all calling me that were off the air in the middle of the day.

They did issue a statement later that night that they were performing "upgrades" when the system crashed.

When are they going to cut their losses with this lousy system and go with XDS. Those new Wagner I-pumps have been crap from day 1. Power supplies crap out, hard drives crap out, units hang down when mounted in a rack because instead of making them 2-ru spaces, they made them 2 feet long.

We also had a problem in the last week or so with closures. We got one of the engineers to admit that they were doing something with the closure systems. We had stray closures firing off for like an hour, and after that, one of our closures fires before it's supposed to, every hour. Then fires again at the proper time. Of course they won't admit a problem on their end, and other engineers claim that there were no such upgrades going on. We'll after this crash, it's obvious that they were trying to cover that one up.

The other thing that has wasted HOURS of my time, is the fact that they don't pre-authorize the receivers. You have to call them, and they insist that the receiver be able to "call home" to them over the internet. I spent hours on the phone with them trying to resolve a problem with that didnt exist. Turns out there was a problem at their end. And getting them to authorize the thing when it won't "call home" is like pulling teeth. The'll do it if you ask nice enough, but they insist YOU fix YOU'RE problem asap.

Lastly on that topic, does anybody else think the network spots that play from the receiver sound like CRAP? You won't hear it on AM, but on FM, the high frequency fuzzyness in their spots is painfully obvious. Again, Dial Global engineering won't admit there is a problem. Or they know, but don't know of a solution to fix it, so they just don't admit to any problem. Oddly enough, the spots in the recievers are mp2's encoded at 256k, which should sound fine. Obviously, something is going on with them before they uplink them to the receivers. If you think the spots sound like crap, please let them know. Maybe if enough of us complain, they will do something.
 
I wasn't too thrilled about it at this end. Three of my stations use ABC/Citadel and all 4 ports of the XDS. So far absolutely no problems, and I like the ability to adjust the programming remotely, especially for the news network feeds. Can't do that with the Wegeners. Well, at least they won't let you.

The closest I got to an explanation to the DG problems last week was a reference to "Wegeners rebooting", and that they were in the middle of an upgrade to keep from happening the things which then were happening.
 
During the outage the Wegener receiver was showing signal--but no audio. But we were getting the net cues.
Very strange.

Also, have one receiver's RF indication slowly sinking (to 8 or so, into "warning" range) while the other Wegener was fine (RF at 12). Did find that our dish had been rocked back a bit (tilted up)--but we've have some thunderstorms with strong winds. Half a turn brought the dish back to normal readings on our remaining Starguide (around 12 eb) and 15 RF on the good Wegener.

We have 2 XDS, one on ABC, one on Premiere; two Wegeners on Dial Global, and one Starguide on ABC on this same dish.
 
What really sucks is I was moving a station and flipping to a talk format with Clark Howard and Neal Boortz. I thought it was my macros, Getting spots to play and no audio. I agree that the Ipump is about the worst piece of garbage I have ever worked with. I tried to reach Dial Global NOC during the crash, No Soap. Called my sales rep, she finaly got someone to admit there was a problem. When I did finaly reach an engineer at NOC they were short with me and blew the problem off as it was no big deal. The day before, I had to call to ger the receiver turned on, I had to beg them to do it and the attitude was: Why are you bothering me with this? Dial Global has engineering problems and really needs to be addressed. Find out who your DG reps are and call and complain. Maybe they will do something to fix this.
 
I will tell you, I get tired of the runaround from the network NOC's...and it's not just one of them...it's all of them. Premiere, Citadel (ABC), WW1...everyone, will NEVER admit to a problem even when there is one. I have 10 stations in different locales throughout the country, and they each fault out when there is a problem with the reception of the respective satellite service, so it's not just "my equipment" or my dish. Why won't these yoyo's take ownership and just say "Yeah, there's a problem" instead of making engineers chase their tails for hours and hours and suddendly everything "just starts working mysteriously"?? I can't count how many times I've called a problem in, them to tell me it's not a problem, then about 5 minutes later, things just "start working". Grrrr!
 
I can't complain about ABC. Other then the fact, they don't answer the phone very often. They always reply to my emails pretty fast. They have always taken care of me.

It used to take an act of god to get Clear Channel/NSN to authorize channels on their starguide, but lately, they seem to have eased up. Last few times I've called there, they have taken care of me no questions asked.

The Dial Global folks are friendly enough on the phone, but still their refusal to admit to problems, and procedures getting these junk receivers authorized and/or replaced needs to be addressed.

I would have thought that when Jones rolled out these receivers, they would have dumped them after at least 50% of them failed in the first year, but instead dial global buys Jones and spends another 2 million to buy more receivers and "upgrades". I would have cut the losses there and went to XDS. Can you immagine the condition these receivers will be in, in 10 years?
 
The way I'm feeling today about ABC/Citadel, after the Hot AC format ran jockless this mornig for hours, indicating that it must have been voice-tracking gone bad (we're talking Sunday morning, not overnight), I would readily move 2 of my stations over to Dial-Global, except for the Wegener receiver issue and the inexcusable interruptions we had last week.

It appears that we pay closer attention to our audio chain in our little rural market than the big boys in Denver, LA, and Dallas.
 
I've also never had a problem with ABC/Citadel. Very few programming outages, and ABC Sat Svcs in NYC has always promptly resolved problems.
 
I've have few programming interruption problems. That part has been reliable, and yes, New York is very helpful. I'm referring to issues this morning on the Hot AC format which caused the affiliates to sound like a jockless jukebox for hours. It is a shame what must be going on at Montfort Drive in Dallas with personnel. My stations have used ABC networks since 1994. But I'm not real interested in running a voice-tracked network format. If necessary, I'll recover my 2 minutes an hour inventory and use the funds to pay local voice-trackers.
 
The folks at ABC have always been very kind and helpful to me. Ron and the folks there work quickly to resolve any problem I have had. Sometimes, I have had to leave a message to call back, but for the most part those guys work hard. I have even had changes done to netcue cards from the operator of the NOC. Dial Global could take a hint from the people at NYC.
 
Same experience here with ABC. I've found them to be very helpful in resolving problems. And they have told me in the past when the problem was on their end.

RFB
 
We've been frustrated with these issues too, folks. We hear your concerns and are addressing each and every one. We'll be working hard to earn your trust. No excuses. I'd invite each of you to call me, or Eric Wiler, our VP/Technology to chat. No doubt we've brought on some of these issues with the challenges of merging the operations of several different companies, but I'm particularly concerned when I hear comments regarding how we've responded. We need to improve here. I'll try to keep an eye on these boards, but direct contact will get a quick response from us, I promise.

Best regards,

Phil Barry
VP/General Manager
Dial Global Formats
(720) 873-5105
[email protected]
 
Thanks for responding here Phil. The scariest thing for an affiliate is having a burn down and just not knowing what's going on. Ideally a combination of a mass email message and a voice mail loop that explains that there is a failure on the tech support call in number would be the bes IMHO. There's no reason to wear our your support guys times hundreds of affiliates if it's not on the affiliates end. I feel soory for most master control/ network operations centers when something big blows up. It's hard to fix something when one has a phone call over and over again. This is where an automated voice message can be very helpful.
 
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