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Power outages and their effect on Houston radio

Well, as someone who actually does, as opposed to someone who pontificates about it on a message board, here were some of the operational issues people encountered last week at various stations across the dial:
  • The roads weren't passable in the beginning, so you were operating on a skeleton crew for a few days
  • The equipment that talent uses to broadcast from home requires at minimum cellular service, which was not reliable after the storm. So you were riding with the people you had working Sunday night, supplemented by staff that could walk to work or safely drive in.
  • I know of one group that had their studios go down because they ran out of diesel
  • At least two groups were running studios on generator for a few days because Centerpoint took the Galleria down.
A lot of people worked their butts off to stay on the air throughout this. They announced where to get water and food, and they did the best that they could with the tools they had. And yes, that means playing a few songs while you searched for information.

As for throwing the phones open and just putting listeners on, that's how misinformation gets spread. I remember someone calling in during hurricane coverage years ago at a station saying that a place was open as a shelter that wasn't open and it became a huge mess when hundreds of desperate people showed up to a locked community center. If you hold a license, you have a responsibility to the community to ensure stuff like that doesn't happen. The difference between the radio and people posting on Nextdoor or Ring Neighbors should be that you can trust what you hear on the radio.
 
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Some radio stations in other states have simulcast TV coverage on their AM or FM stations through either having the same owners or through agreements between different owners.
 
From the insideradio.com article:

>>>Lindsay turned his show over to the listeners who were asking about and reporting on conditions around the city. “We had calls everywhere – north, south, east [and] west,” he told the music publication. “It was heart-breaking. It was gut-wrenching. You kind of let people talk.”<<<

Excellent! Perfect!! I still personally feel this is exactly what is needed in a situation like this. There will always be time to go back to regular programming, when the time is right. George Lindsay and Entercom did the right thing!
 
Long ago, I was on the leadership of a college radio station when a major weather event hit our area. Thankfully, our class C2 license stayed on the air. When one of our leaders was driving around, he noticed the local NPR news outlet -- along with plenty of other stations -- was off the air. He quickly got on the phone and offered them use of our signal. While the offer was not accepted, the justification was simple. We did not have the ability to immediately stand up a news broadcast, but they were ready to roll. My understanding was a technical gap in obtaining their programming (again, this was a long time ago), and thus, our station played automated indie rock through the storm that I struggle to believe served the public good.

I don't think I was the only one to notice the gap. A Letter to the Editor today on the radio situation during the storm -- "No radio news" -- Opinion: 'We had nightmares' - readers' blackout stories.
 
Allow me to point out, anyone that has been behind the microphone knows, it is the program director and management that make decisions on any change in the usual format. To do so without permission is a good way to be shown the door. Did the PD or management know power would go out and stay out? If they knew that, they failed in planning. If they thought this might be record cold and maybe we could see some snow, maybe they didn't consider all the possibilities. Generally speaking if the public was unprepared, chances are radio was too.
 
DavidEduardo said:
You know that many, many of them were running on their own power during the worst days? They were not burdening the grid.

A 100 kw FM does not have a 100 kw transmitter. Most of the ERP comes from antenna "gain" where a 40 kw FM transmitter can provide 100 kw horizontal and 100 kw vertical ERP based on the antenna.
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For better or worse, the Missouri City tower farm never lost shore power during the ice storm event.
 
I was tuning around the dial while warming up in the car and charging my phone. During Harvey, KUHF was a mix of in-studio and KHOU/KTRK simulcast on HD1, KHOU simulcast on HD2, and KTRK simulcast on HD3. And KMJQ was simulcasting KTRK on analog/HD1. Sadly this setup did not resume during the Winter Storm!

On Monday morning, KUHF was on its normal schedule the whole time. KTRH and KPRC were on talk shows as normal. Every FM & AM station was on normal programming like there was no catastrophic storm outside! Music like nothing was happening! Is radio now automated in Market #6? This situation shows how mandatory FM radios in cell phones are useless during catastrophes without the required public service programming.

The storm coverage was on TV, but it was useless for almost all Houstonians because of the power outage. What was the point of TV covering the storm if radio could not simulcast the audio like during Harvey? The Big 4 stations could have just gone back to normal programming since nobody was watching.

I ended up DXing KRLD from Dallas during the storm for reliable news and information. There was some first-adjacent interference from a muted KNTH. (That indicated that there was power at the NW Houston transmitter site, but the Sharpstown studios had no power.) Thanks to the low sun angle in February, KRLD was stable day & night!
Fieldtech1 said:
For better or worse, the Missouri City tower farm never lost shore power during the ice storm event.
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It was a surprise to see that all the HD channels were working. That meant that they were on their primary transmitters and on full-power. The programming was a different story!

It also seems that during the short spurts of power at my house, the TV station studios had continuous power. (Although KPRC-TV mentioned that they lost water for a short while on Wednesday.) The power from the TV stations could have been redirected to keep homes warm (and water plants pumping, etc.).
 
KTN Corp said:
It also seems that during the short spurts of power at my house, the TV station studios had continuous power. (Although KPRC-TV mentioned that they lost water for a short while on Wednesday.) The power from the TV stations could have been redirected to keep homes warm (and water plants pumping, etc.).
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You make it sound as if TV stations were hogging power that should have gone elsewhere.

TV stations have (or should have) backup generators in case of power outages. But in such cases nonessential equipment at the studios will be shut off to conserve usage. There wouldn't be any excess capacity to send elsewhere, and likely no way of redistributing it in such a situation.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
You make it sound as if TV stations were hogging power that should have gone elsewhere.

TV stations have (or should have) backup generators in case of power outages. But in such cases nonessential equipment at the studios will be shut off to conserve usage. There wouldn't be any excess capacity to send elsewhere, and likely no way of redistributing it in such a situation.
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Excellent points.

Radio and TV stations with generators usually only provide for the essential on-air areas of the building, not the business offices or, even, the outside signage, or decorative illumination. A gennie is expensive, and as the capacity increases the cost multiplies. But, even beyond that, the requirements for fuel storage increase... in some cases beyond local zoning limits for combustibles in a business district.

And a generator is set up to switch off the electric company line when the power goes out. In nearly no case can the station feed its power back into the power grid... and even if it could, there is little or no excess capacity installed beyond studios and transmission equipment requirements.
 
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KTN Corp said:
On Monday morning, KUHF was on its normal schedule the whole time. KTRH and KPRC were on talk shows as normal. Every FM & AM station was on normal programming like there was no catastrophic storm outside! Music like nothing was happening! Is radio now automated in Market #6? This situation shows how mandatory FM radios in cell phones are useless during catastrophes without the required public service programming.
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Stations that don't normally cover news are not going to be able to do that in an emergency. They have no staff, no news contacts, no system for news coverage. Each large market has a few stations that are news providers and those will, generally, be available directly or by rebroadcast on the owner's other stations in the market. We don't need 30 stations trying to cover news when only a couple are qualified to do that.
KTN Corp said:
The storm coverage was on TV, but it was useless for almost all Houstonians because of the power outage. What was the point of TV covering the storm if radio could not simulcast the audio like during Harvey? The Big 4 stations could have just gone back to normal programming since nobody was watching.
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There were areas with power, there were buildings with generators. That is better than no service at all.
KTN Corp said:
The power from the TV stations could have been redirected to keep homes warm (and water plants pumping, etc.).
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No, it could not. That is as close to an "impossibility" as can possibly exist. I posted in another response that stations only generate enough power to handle their studios in minimal fashion. They have no excess power or fuel and no way to feed it into the power grid anyway. The generator at a TV station could not even power a single residential block of homes, and, further, there would not be any way to just feed a few homes without loads of power company disconnections of cables and breakers.

Note: generally, a broadcast studio facility calculates the power usage to produce their programming, light the studios and send a signal to the transmitter. Then they look at the most efficient load on possible generators where they burn the least fuel for the desired output; that might be at around 70% of the maximum capacity of the plant. Then they buy the "right size" and design a facility with enough fuel storage (within the code) to last the desired period... depending on the zone the station is in. In a hurricane zone, one might want 5 to 6 day's worth. In a tornado zone, less. And in Cleveland or Indianapolis, perhaps just a couple of day's worth. This is a business and you can't afford to plan for Armageddon when the increased costs of acquision and maintenance make no sense.
 
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Mediafrog+ said:
You make it sound as if TV stations were hogging power that should have gone elsewhere.
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Someone said back in February that the Missouri City tower farm never lost power.

I'm not saying that turning off the FM stations would have ended the blackout. But I do seem to recall being told by government officials that every little bit helped. All Texans were urged to unplug unnecessary devices/appliances.
 
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BamaTX said:
Someone said back in February that the Missouri City tower farm never lost power.

I'm not saying that turning off the FM stations would have ended the blackout. But I do seem to recall being told by government officials that every little bit helped. All Texans were urged to unplug unnecessary devices/appliances.
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They "never lost power" because as soon as the power grid went down, generators fired up all over the place.

The Missouri City towers and their occupants all have backup power intended to do everything from keeping the stations, point to point communications and other telecom occupants operating to keeping the tower lights lit so that planes don't it them!

That power is not taken off the grid when the grid is down. The stations are running on either shared generators (for some sites) to individual generator sets for individual stations at other sites.

Again, those generator sets can't feed back into the grid. They are not set up to do that, and even if they were, even all those towers and transmitters don't have enough generator power to handle more than a few city blocks or so of homes... and then the would have to turn off everything... transmitters, fire and police and emergency transmitters, all kind of communications systems plus about half of the market's FMs and the principal TV stations.

In addition, none of those generators, AFAIK, is wired to feed into the grid, and they likely don't have the systems needed to synchronize with the grid, anyway.
 
DavidEduardo said:
They "never lost power" because as soon as the power grid went down, generators fired up all over the place.
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No. Someone claimed that the Senior Rd tower never lost power throughout the blackout (meaning the generators were never used).

It's not a farfetched claim since a few areas in Houston didn't lose power at all. A friend of mine only lost power for a few hours at most.

DavidEduardo said:
In addition, none of those generators, AFAIK, is wired to feed into the grid, and they likely don't have the systems needed to synchronize with the grid, anyway.
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I didn't claim they could (or that they should).

All I'm saying is that if it is true (that they never lost power from the grid), then most of their power usage was wasteful. Residents were told to turn off non-essential electronics and appliances to conserve energy because "every little bit helped". Radio was absolutely non-essential during the storm. They served no purpose during an emergency.
 
BamaTX said:
All I'm saying is that if it is true (that they never lost power from the grid), then most of their power usage was wasteful. Residents were told to turn off non-essential electronics and appliances to conserve energy because "every little bit helped". Radio was absolutely non-essential during the storm. They served no purpose during an emergency.
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If they had no emergency coverage than yeah, they should have turned off.
 
BamaTX said:
Radio was absolutely non-essential during the storm. They served no purpose during an emergency.
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If they were giving out information, updates, taking live calls and/or acting as a news source, then they were important, providing a public service and should've remained on the air. If they were airing satellite programming controlled by a computer in a closet then fully agreed, completely non-essential if all the other assumptions you've made about their use of the power grid during that time were true.
 
Mikey Radio said:
If they were giving out information, updates, taking live calls and/or acting as a news source, then they were important and should've remained on the air. If they were airing satellite programming controlled by a computer in a closet then fully agreed, completely non-essential if all the other assumptions you've made about their use of the power grid during that time were true.
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Again, those stations that were in areas affected by blackouts were using their own independent local generators that are not part of the power grid and which can't be connected to the grid... and even if they were, they only produce enough power to handle a few homes.
 
AnyHuman said:
If they had no emergency coverage than yeah, they should have turned off.
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I can't think of any even minor station in a metro area that does not have an emergency generator. Most of the "shared" towers have generators for the tower lighting and emergency operation, including outside security lighting and security cameras.

In many emergency cases where power is not stable... perhaps coming and going or voltage issues... we switch to the generator to protect our gear from damage from an unstable power source.

In fact, most facilities and/ or individual station have a UPS that will keep everything except, maybe, the transmitter, on in the event of a failure or fluctuation while the generator turns itself on... a process that can take from about 30" to a minute.
 
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