• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

KREX-TV in Grand Junction, Colorado burns down

WOW! I've actually been by there and this is a shocker! I wonder how the CBS feed is being supplied to cable customers on the Western Slope and if they're just getting CBS4 from Denver. The station has a pretty large system of translators and repeaters across western CO and in Moab, UT as well.
 
And it gets worse -- Grand Junction is temporarily without THREE local stations, including KFQX (Fox) and KGJT-LP (MNTV). These stations were run by KREX from their studios.
 
What does a market do in this situation to recover the loss of coverage? Does the television station work with another market station or cluster to temporarily lease transmitter space to resume operations somehow? Or would out of market affiliates nearby work out something with the Cable and Sat providers? What about people that want to watch the affected affiliates by DBS satellite that lost the signal? This sounds like a really big deal longterm-wise for the station and it's DMA. I've never heard of such a massive outage like this before in a market.
 
The good news is that the transmitter site for the affected stations (with the exception of KREX-DT) was at a different location from the studios. That makes it a little easier to get at least some sort of over-the-air service restored. In a bigger market, you'd roll the live truck or the satellite truck up to the transmitter site and switch the network out of the truck at the transmitter site. Grand Junction is small enough that KREX may not have that capability.

In the short term, they could end up putting Denver signals or even just the raw CBS/Fox network feeds out over the KREX and KFQX transmitters for OTA viewers, I suppose. (For DBS viewers, it would be a fairly simple matter for Echo and Direct to make the Denver signals available to viewers in the GJ market.)

In the longer term, a fire like this must be a nightmare to recover from, since it appears that EVERYTHING is gone - not just master control, but all the station's promos, its spots, its traffic records, and so on. I hope at least some of that data was backed up somewhere. And the nice thing about broadcasters, especially in a small market like GJ, is that they really do look out for each other. I'm sure that if there's any way KJCT and KKCO can help provide studio space or switching space or any other resource KREX needs, they'll do so.
 
Scott Fybush said:
The good news is that the transmitter site for the affected stations (with the exception of KREX-DT) was at a different location from the studios. That makes it a little easier to get at least some sort of over-the-air service restored. In a bigger market, you'd roll the live truck or the satellite truck up to the transmitter site and switch the network out of the truck at the transmitter site. Grand Junction is small enough that KREX may not have that capability.
Click to expand...

Furthermore, KREX has two satellites (KREY and KREG) and scores of low-powered repeaters, while KFQX has several repeaters. A way to reconnect them all to the "mothership" must be found, as well.
 
azumanga said:
Scott Fybush said:
The good news is that the transmitter site for the affected stations (with the exception of KREX-DT) was at a different location from the studios. That makes it a little easier to get at least some sort of over-the-air service restored. In a bigger market, you'd roll the live truck or the satellite truck up to the transmitter site and switch the network out of the truck at the transmitter site. Grand Junction is small enough that KREX may not have that capability.
Click to expand...

Furthermore, KREX has two satellites (KREY and KREG) and scores of low-powered repeaters, while KFQX has several repeaters. A way to reconnect them all to the "mothership" must be found, as well.
Click to expand...

That may well be the least of their worries - and since KREY has at least minimal production facilities of its own, it may even be possible to restore at least some of KREX's local production and ad insertion from Montrose.

The links between KREX and KREY/KREG were probably microwave links, and should be fairly easy to restore from the KREX transmitter site. The feeds to the translator stations were probably originated off-the-air, so as soon as a signal is restored from the GJ transmitter site, it would be restored to the translators, too.
 
Half a lifetime ago, I worked in that old building. The lobby was once the original radio studio, with the ceiling bumped up in the 1950s to accomodate TV lighting.

Later, the radio studios on the first floor were converted to TV master control. KREX operated KFOX and KGJT-LP from that master control, as well as handling commercial insertion to Montrose (KREY) and Glenwood SPrings (KREG) from that same location. THe KREX-DT transmitter was located at the studio, with an antenna mounted on the venerable backyard tower.

That old place stood for the best part of 70 years...and some very good people passed through its doorways including Dick Nourse (recently retired from KSL Salt Lake City), Alby Oxenreiter (WPGH Pittsburgh), Jeff Rickard (ESPN Radio Network), Val Zavala (who anchored KCET-LA's "Life and Times" for many years) and John Hook (anchor at KSAZ Phoenix). All of them -- and I -- did some of our first early work at 345 Hillcrest Drive. The technology was never "state-of-the-art" but the people always made up for it with innovation, hard work and pride.

You can rebuild KREX elsewhere in Grand Junction - and to be fair, doing so is probably long overdue -- but you can never "replace" that old art-deco block glass broadcasting house that Rex Howell built when he decided to move from the Front Range to Grand Junction in 1931. I will miss Hillcrest Manor...

All the best to the KREX team.
 
KREX-5/Fox4 fire -- a national story

Made the AP wire and got picked up as far away as Orlando. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel has a slideshow of photos from the fire.

GJ cable is airing raw feeds of CBS and Fox per the Daily Sentinel. Dish Network carries GJ locals, so it may be substituting CBS4 and Fox31 from Denver as Scott hinted. DirecTV doesn't offer GJ locals.
 
Wow it's a real shame something like this occurred to the good folks at KREX. Never went there but I do remember driving by it when I was visited KJCT. Being Grand Junction's first TV station I'm sure they'll be able to get back on their feet, though tragically a lot of history has been lost.
 
Re: KREX-5/Fox4 fire -- a national story

chuckydoll said:
GJ cable is airing raw feeds of CBS and Fox per the Daily Sentinel.
Click to expand...

How did KREX-TV delay the CBS network, such as to air prime time "in pattern"?

In-house analog (tape) or digital delay system, or a feed (likely with multiple
microwave hops for the approx. 200 miles, if the terrain allowed) from either
KCNC-TV Denver or KUTV Salt Lake City?

Per the mention of the GJT cable system airing raw CBS feeds, does this mean
the east coast satellite "live," with prime and late-night an hour earlier?

I noticed their daytime schedule--now apparently dated zap2it.com listings for
Tuesday--was mostly live net with a couple of flips either to in- or out-of-pattern.

Has KREX-TV established a staffing presence at the cable head-end to dump out
of the sat feed during local breaks? Not sure the viewers are ready for "attention
all stations, theah will be two items on the news feed at 11:01:30......monitah
the next station break foah moah infahmation. This is CBS Aiah Control, New Yawk."
OK, so the reference may be years (yeahs?) dated, but I'm sure the network still
does some stuff like that during the local breaks. ;)
 
Scott Fybush said:
In the longer term, a fire like this must be a nightmare to recover from, since it appears that EVERYTHING is gone - not just master control, but all the station's promos, its spots, its traffic records, and so on. I hope at least some of that data was backed up somewhere. And the nice thing about broadcasters, especially in a small market like GJ, is that they really do look out for each other. I'm sure that if there's any way KJCT and KKCO can help provide studio space or switching space or any other resource KREX needs, they'll do so.
Click to expand...

In most cases the traffic data is stored off-site.

I concur with your response to "azmanga": I strongly suspect the links to the Glenwood Springs and Montrose transmitters originate from the Grand Junction transmitter site. (not the burned studio) Once they get programming to the channel 5 transmitter, channels 3 and 10 will probably be taken care of.

Likewise for the low-power translators: either they're fed off-air or they get their satellite feeds from the channel 5 transmitter site.
 
You have to feel for them. All the commercials, promos, archive footage, and sessions are gone. Just makes me sick to think about. Here's hoping they had backups off site.
 
My first thought was, "Hey! That's Dick Nourse's old station."

Around this time last year, a couple of months before NAB, I was thinking about the Katrina-thing (and other potential disasters) and wondering if there would be interest in an NAB-sponsored "insurance" program that would pay to build a few mobile studio and mobile transmitter facilities. Something like a "mini studio and master control in a trailer" and a "transmitter and tower in a trailer", each with satellite and microwave gear, as well as the usual stuff. I scribbled down a bunch of notes and made some sketches.

Funny.... I got to NAB, and there, on display, was a huge "backup transmitter in a trailer" (3 of them were constructed) for the MediaFLO people, who do video on the cellphone service on TV channel 55. DVB-T transmitters, mask filters, tower and antennas, generator and fuel tanks.

For now, KREX may likely get a few modular "double-wide" trailers, and start looking for studio gear that can "jump" over the existing orders that are ready to ship to stations. A small production truck could suffice for a few weeks....a satellite feed could link them to the TV transmitter and to cable and DBS headends.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom