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KNX meltdown

B

Bigpuppy

Yikes! :eek: A radio person's nightmare this morning...as KNX suffered an equipment failure that shut down everything except the anchor mic from about 5 to 530 AM PST. Listening from 1000 miles away I could hear the anchor and the producer trying to figure out what was wrong...tapping the mic...trying different things...seemed for awhile like they didn't know their conversation was on the air...but nothing worked. No spots. No traffic. No actualities. Just the anchor, who gamely plowed through whatever copy that could be found, while engineers were scrambled. Props to them for not dropping the f-bombs they were no doubt thinking!
 
I seem to recall a similar event happening at KRTH not long after they moved into the same facility. I can't remember, but it may have something to do with their digital control surface rather than the operating system.
 
Here comes Mr. Techno-Geek dissing that which has bought my bread but there is something to be said about those old patch panels that looked like Ernestine's switchboard. You could easily eliminate a failed piece of equipment by patching around it. If necessary you could almost instantly make your production studio an air-studio. Worse case you could even use your remote gear on air until the problem was resolved. There was something good about those ancient analog systems when everything wasn't digital.
 
Equipment crashes

Equipment is not infallible-it DOES crash from time to time. I had a switch in my LAN have 5 of it's 8 ports just stop working today-after running flawlessly since it was installed almost a year ago. Power cycling it restored its operation.
Unfortunately, the more centralized equipment becomes (as in a master router for 8 radio stations), the worse a crash becomes. And yes, I'd ALWAYS have a few analog boards about in a large facility, with the ability to patch and/or analog switch them on air. That's simply being smart and pro-active. Always assume that a disaster will happen, and have a back-up plan. Finally, they are lucky this happened at 5 AM on a weekend-and not in the middle on AM drive on a weekday.
 
Reminds me of an advanced touch-sensitive board (first with VCAs instead of pots) I used at a station in 1980. During winter, it was not uncommon to touch the board and have a static electricity charge reverse ALL the state switches, turning off what was on (Cart machine music) and turning on what was off (studio mic) with the resultant "what the?" seemingly splice-cut into the show. Fortunately management got rid of the board within a year.
 
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