I think Pittsburgh radio sucks

[FreddyE1977]

Most of the radio stations I worked at had rats and roaches.

"Fried rat in the transmitter" is a very common tale.

 

[DavidEduardo]

"Fried rat in the transmitter" is a very common tale.

I made a decision to go 24/7 with a station back around 1967 after being called at 6AM and told that the transmitter would not go on and that it smelled "rotten".

A rat had gotten in on a chilly night and gone to sleep over the high voltage transformer. When the transmitter was turned on, the rat exploded. It took two hours with alcohol, q-tips, a toothbrush, gloves and a mask to get it ready to turn back on.

 

[DavidEduardo]

I've completely given up trying to listen to Coast to Coast at night on 104.7. From dead air to blown cues to actually playing 3 programs on top of each other.
This is the kind of crap that deregulation brought us.

This is the kind of thing that Docket 80-90 brought us... more stations than a market could support and subsequent cost cutting everywhere.

As BigA said, that was prior to deregulation. Deregulation took place because over half of all US stations were not profitable. This was caused by the FCC allowing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of new FMs, upgrades in existing stations and the move of FMs from East Nowhere to a suburb of some big market.

 

[DavidEduardo]

Lets all hope that if "the big one" comes, the 17 year old highschool kid watching 3 stations at 2:30 in the morning is'nt on his phone. I can't imagine thats what was imagined to come out of deregulation. Actually, is'nt the big argument that deregulation opens up competition and increases jobs? Really?

In all likelihood, at 2:30 AM there is nobody there. Just the automation.

 

[Mikey Radio]

Wow, DavidEduardo, you resurrected this thread, where the last post before yours had been written 9 years ago! Well done..