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Power outages and their effect on Houston radio

A

AnyHuman

Guest
How are Houston radio stations holding up during the power outages and bad weather? Here in Kansas City, there's 1 or 2 FM stations that are having dead air or off altogether. I imagine Houston's getting hit worse, someone I know down there had their pipes burst unfortunately and has to move.
 
Another example, just found out that in San Antonio all the Alpha stations are dead air, and KTFM is off completely.
 
I have been having problems with my phone. Data has not been working, we have had power outages at home since 5:30 pm last night until now. Now that power came back I was able to connect to WiFi. Regular data on AT&T has been horrible.

Well back to the subject, I didn’t get to listen much to the radio today. But on KLTN, Raul Brindis show was airing with very low volume. Until they played a song it would go back up then back to low volume again.

Also KLOL was choppy at times.
 
Sorry for this messy formatting, I was bored monday with no power and checked the radio dial. KPFT was off the air on Monday at 2:58 and came back on sometime on Tuesday and was recently off the air again but came back. Their HD2 is dead air. Monday in Huntsville KHVL, (1490 am and 104.9), KSAM were off the air around 5:30 am. KHVL’s 94.1 translator was dead air while the station was off. They said their backup generator wasn’t working. They’re back now. I noticed KSHU went off the air around 11 am on Monday. KTYR had dead air on Monday and was off the air for a bit and came back on with dead air. KHML was choppy on Monday. KTWL has been off the air and I’m still able to hear the Houston translator on 105.3. KKHT had dead air on Monday but came back. I haven’t been able to hear KFNC on the air. KJHJ, KCVE, KZCC, and KZCW in Conroe had dead air on Monday. KZCW and KZCC is back now. KCYB (cypress) and KYBY (magnolia) both had dead air a few hours ago. 700, 880, 1140, and 1490 am were off the air and maybe more. KTJR was off the air for a bit Tuesday and is back now. I can’t get HD or RDS. Some Houston translators I noticed that had dead air were K223CW, K231CN, 99.5 Radio Dabang, K260DD, and K283CH. Right now 89.3 KSBJ is broadcasting dead air but their HD isn’t.
 
Mrtejano said:
Regular data on AT&T has been horrible.
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AT&T has been basically unusable. I was at 3 different places on Monday without power and data has been incredibly slow at all those places. It’s usually very fast there. Just a tip for if your power goes out again, switch your data to 4G if you can.
 
All the cell companies are affected by this storm. Much heavier use due to the lack of power and problems with the rolling power outages and backup power in many places. Verizon has been very slow when we were going through rolling blackouts over in Beaumont. Most of the stations here seem to be on at this time.
 
A bunch of Austin stations were off, KOKE was off for a while they are back on, 104.9 was also off now back on, 102.3 was completely off now back on. Still a few lp stations are off, KLBQ is still off. I also noticed on my Verizon phone yesterday it kept going from 4GLTE to 3G to 4G and often was slow but always worked.
 
The am stations here seem to be impacted more than FM.

700, and 1360 might be on the night time transmitters.


These stations are dead air 880, 920, 980, 1050, 1090, 1140 (92.3 was making weird sounds yesterday and I can’t find it now), 1230, 1380 (99.9 too), 1520, 1590

These stations are most likely off the air 1070 (can’t get 103.3), 1110, 1320, 1460, 1480

I noticed KFNC is back on the air but the 92.5 translator that was dead air is now off the air.
 
Power aside - has anyone heard anything actually compelling on the radio?

During some brief sampling, heard Sunny doing school closings which was at least something. Seemed like business as usual with some presumably voicetracked giveaway promos at the Eagle yesterday afternoon, while I heard KRBE make an awkward comment about dead chimpanzees in San Antonio while upselling some The Weeknd.

ABC13 and local TV have been knocking it out of the park. Radio... not from what I’ve heard.
 
encarta95 said:
Power aside - has anyone heard anything actually compelling on the radio?

During some brief sampling, heard Sunny doing school closings which was at least something. Seemed like business as usual with some presumably voicetracked giveaway promos at the Eagle yesterday afternoon, while I heard KRBE make an awkward comment about dead chimpanzees in San Antonio while upselling some The Weeknd.

ABC13 and local TV have been knocking it out of the park. Radio... not from what I’ve heard.
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Rod Ryan did great radio this morning, throwing out the format and taking call after call with people describing their experiences and situations, some breaking down into tears, while providing them information and most importantly a place to feel heard. It was exactly what a live, local morning show should do in times of an emergency like this.
 
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I checked the dial Tuesday and Monday afternoons. All but one of the downtown translators were broadcasting dead carriers. The only one with content was 105.3, but I suspect that the station is still a simple MP3 player/laptop at the transmitter site stuck on shuffle.

I can also confirm KFNC and KPFT were off-air on at both check-ins.

As far as the rimshots, KTJM was going on and off the air at times on Monday (not very frequent to notice tbh). On Tuesday, it was completely dead (101.7 was still going though). KQQK didn't seem to suffer from the same issues and was on the air both days. Odd considering both stations are at the same site. KKHT was off the air on Tuesday (I don't recall if they were on Monday). KTHT was coming in extra strong on both days. I had forgotten how good the station sounds.

All Mo City + KLTN/KAMA stations were on as well. I suspect the KMJQ tower was on backup or reduced power as it didn't sound as strong.

Having said all that, it seems most stations have gone automated and there's not much information out there that is of use to the public. It seems they all preferred to play music instead of offering live updates on the rolling blackouts (or lack thereof).

As far as cellphone use, T-Mobile has been susceptible to the power outages all over Texas. Even on sites that have generators, they seem to be going off-line along with the (un)rolling outages. I'm guessing it is a power issue with their backhaul provider (they use Zayo). T-Mobile has generators on most sites (along with several permits with the City of Houston to install/replace generators over the past three years). I doubt so many of them would be broken this fast.

Sprint used to have an excellent emergency response system, but it seems it was neutered by T-Mobile after the merger. Lots of off-line Sprint towers. I could only catch their 800 MHz SMR 1xRTT carrier.

AT&T and Verizon seem to have better power fallback options (or at least in the northern part of the metro). But with the outages, they don't have the spectrum to handle all of the area's users going online during a blackout. Band 13/5 was useless for Verizon when using Data services. AT&T was surprisingly ok for light browsing and Spotify listening.

As far as Comcast, they seem to be a champ and have chugged along fairly well during this Yankee Weather takeover. Fired up the generator and plugged in my router. Internet worked and was able to fire up YoutubeTV, Hulu, and Netflix.

I don't have access to AT&T Fiber, so I can't speak in their reliability.

The only thing I didn't check was over the air TV. Antenna is in the attic and hooked up since Harvey. But I didn't find a need for it since Youtube TV worked. Anyone checked to see which TV stations (if any) went off the air?
 
BamaTX said:
The only one with content was 105.3, but I suspect that the station is still a simple MP3 player/laptop at the transmitter site stuck on shuffle.
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I doubt it, 105.3 may be from somewhere else that does have power now, since it's started with the new LaPower format. It also may be a remote-controled computer at the transmitter site then again, not sure.
 
Most of what I heard sounded normal as far as the big stations go. KROI somehow sounded even weaker/worse than normal which I didn't know was possible.
 
Huff said:
Rod Ryan did great radio this morning, throwing out the format and taking call after call with people describing their experiences and situations, some breaking down into tears, while providing them information and most importantly a place to feel heard. It was exactly what a live, local morning show should do in times of an emergency like this.
Click to expand...

I worked in the studio down the hall from Rod many years ago, in another market. Great guy who GETS why local radio matters. Reading this doesn't surprise me at all.
 
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