radio train wrecks

[Mike Sheridan]

How about "Time Won't Let Me" by The Outsiders?

 

[qman]

Isn't it time by the Babys, Time in a bottle by Jim Croce, Time by the Culture Club, Time after time by Cyndi Lauper, No Time by the Guess Who, Pony Time by Chubby Checker. Anything else?

 

[Ed Trefzger]

Anything else?

While only the title speaks ... "Time Is Tight" by Booker T and the MGs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHq4laFwAEM

 

[Element9]

The Guess Who, "No Time"

 

[oldschooler1]

A sunny, warm weekend in April 1980 -- and WSYR-FM/94 Rock in Syracuse was playing one of those all-weekend specials that came canned, The History of Album Rock. In the middle of the afternoon on saturday, the needle gets stuck in a Beatles song -- and for at least 5 minutes -- I swear, it was that long, you don't forget a trainwreck like this - for 5 minutes, the needle stuck on "I am the eggman, I am the eggman, I am the eggman"....On a 100,000 watt FM powerhouse station that everyone listened to.

I once heard WXXI-AM sit in dead air for a half-hour on a Saturday at 6PM. Yes, I kept listening -- I wanted to hear how long it would last! They missed an entire show.

As a jock at WTKO in Ithaca in the mid 80s, I was listening at home and getting ready to work the overnight shift on a Sunday night -- we were playing Dr. Demento, which came on disc. I heard a break come up, and silence. Silence. Looooong silence. Still silence. I mean, again, like 10 minutes or more! I left the house, walked the 10 minutes or so to the station for my shift, and found the jock looking quite bleary-eyed. I asked her, "have a nice nap?" She just glared at me.

 

[Coldfinger]

I was in Columbus, Ohio a while ago and while listening to the Classic Rock station, I heard a commercial begin about four times before it actually played in its entirety. I suspect the production person was setting a level to record the commercial into the system but hit the "F" key early, resulting in, "It's the Spring sale... (pause) It's the... (pause) It's the Spring sale you can't miss... (pause) It's the..." and finally the entire commercial. It got my attention in more ways that one, and the client got a 75 second 60.

 

[nitro99]

This one goes back to approx 2001 when "Jammin Oldies" was the flavor of the month.

I was driving from Austin to Dallas one Saturday evening around July 4th when something went haywire and all the jingles and bumpers played back-to-back, wall-to-wall for nearly an hour.

Jammin' Oldies, Magic 102, Dallas (ReelWorld jingle package).

Yeah, I couldn't turn it off.

 

[Philip_Airtime]

This one comes from the analog era when WGR-FM was running automated Solid Gold, possibly from Drake-Chennault, pre-Super Q. I listened to the station only occasionally but once heard the fastest ten minutes in radio when the (od minutes) time-check cart deck went on a tare: "It's 6:21, it's 6:23, it's 6:25, it's 6:27..." After it reached about 6:49, the Solid Gold jingle fired and a song played. Can't remember what the song was, but after the runaway time checks, it would have been amusing to hear "Time Is On My Side" by the Stones or the Zombies "Time of the Season."

I can identify with this, JPB. I was working at what was then WBJZ in Olean in the late '70s. We had one of those mechanical automation systems that required you to place pins on a pinpad that would trigger the next event. Well, that often malfunctioned. I remember coming out of an AM newscast, only to hear my FM drop-ins running just as you described. "It's 20 before 8 on Country 101 Good Morning," immediately followed by "It's 10 before 8, good morning." Arghhh! I can't remember the times I sat there screaming at that machine!

Jump ahead 30 years, and we still have the same problems. Except we're no longer yelling at a machine that takes up the whole wall. We yell at a small computer screen. But more often than not, it's not the computer's fault. The problems are usually caused by faulty data that was entered by some human (yes, me, in some cases), which causes the automation to foul up! Not always, but more often than not.

 

[Bob1370]

"I once heard WXXI-AM sit in dead air for a half-hour on a Saturday at 6PM. Yes, I kept listening -- I wanted to hear how long it would last! They missed an entire show."

I recall that incident when we spent way too long throwing out a dead carrier with no audio...and it wasn't the station's fault.

WXXI-AM is one of several Rochester stations with downtown studios that can't easily and reliably send programming to their suburban transmitters through a microwave STL because of terrain issues involving tall buildings, Pinnacle Hill and Cobbs Hill. So we use parallel 15 kHz-response phone lines provided by Frontier Telephone. On very rare occasions, a goof or a glitch at Frontier's office wpuld sever the link, and it could take anything from a few minutes to up to a half hour to trace and fix the problem. That's what happened in that case. The moment the lines came back, so did the programming. Fortunately it's never been a frequent occurrence...I can recall only two or three times in the 21 years I've been working there.

 

[qman]

That's happened more than once at our Crawford stations. What we would do is take a spare CD player to the transmitter site along with a couple of produced CDs and air those. Once our PD Mark did part of his show from the transmitter site. We have pics posted on our website www.legends1027.com.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

As a jock at WTKO in Ithaca in the mid 80s, I was listening at home and getting ready to work the overnight shift on a Sunday night -- we were playing Dr. Demento, which came on disc. I heard a break come up, and silence. Silence. Looooong silence. Still silence. I mean, again, like 10 minutes or more! I left the house, walked the 10 minutes or so to the station for my shift, and found the jock looking quite bleary-eyed. I asked her, "have a nice nap?" She just glared at me.

I can relate with the above. Back in 1973 it was early in my radio career and I was working the God Squad hours at RKO's WAXY-FM in Fort Lauderdale. The station had a big public service block because of all the sticky FCC problems RKO had. Anyway I was leaning back in the chair around 4:00 AM and through the fog of my half conscious brain, I think... Hey listen to that dead air why doesn't the idiot hit the button? Then the realization comes...the idiot is me! : I swear I don't know how long it was!

 

[Rob Jason]

As a jock at WTKO in Ithaca in the mid 80s, I was listening at home and getting ready to work the overnight shift on a Sunday night -- we were playing Dr. Demento, which came on disc. I heard a break come up, and silence. Silence. Looooong silence. Still silence. I mean, again, like 10 minutes or more! I left the house, walked the 10 minutes or so to the station for my shift, and found the jock looking quite bleary-eyed. I asked her, "have a nice nap?" She just glared at me.

I can relate with the above. Back in 1973 it was early in my radio career and I was working the God Squad hours at RKO's WAXY-FM in Fort Lauderdale. The station had a big public service block because of all the sticky FCC problems RKO had. Anyway I was leaning back in the chair around 4:00 AM and through the fog of my half conscious brain, I think... Hey listen to that dead air why doesn't the idiot hit the button? Then the realization comes...the idiot is me! : I swear I don't know how long it was!

Yes!!! At public radio WRVO in Oswego, as a SUNY student, I board-opped block programming on reel-to-reel from NPR. One sunday morning, I laid down in the talk studio, on this table covered with carpet -- the softest thing in the place. I dreamt I was at a radio board, and that there were tones going out over the air -- and I couldn't figure out how to turn the tones off. Typical radio dream.
Only, it was real life. I woke up, the show had long ended, and NPR tones were feeding on the air.
Some lady actually called and said "those weren't the EBS tones, were they?" No ma'am, Nine Mile One has not melted down. ;D

 

[AJF]

Here's a train wreck for ya...

CING-FM in Burlington had a pre-recorded weekly roundup of local news that was carried every Saturday morning at 9 a.m., and repeated at 11 p.m. (and I think once in between). Anyway, I happened to be listening to the 9 a.m. roundup and something very unusual happened: the newscaster started her roundup, then shortly thereafter fell off her chair. I kid you not. After a few seconds, she resumed the newscast in mid-report as if nothing had happened. It was quite hilarious. I was curious to see if they'd redo the roundup before they repeated it, so I made a point of listening that night at 11 p.m. Nope, the same roundup was carried with her falling off the chair!

 

[Radknowski]

Here's a train wreck for ya...

CING-FM in Burlington had a pre-recorded weekly roundup of local news that was carried every Saturday morning at 9 a.m., and repeated at 11 p.m. (and I think once in between). Anyway, I happened to be listening to the 9 a.m. roundup and something very unusual happened: the newscaster started her roundup, then shortly thereafter fell off her chair. I kid you not. After a few seconds, she resumed the newscast in mid-report as if nothing had happened. It was quite hilarious. I was curious to see if they'd redo the roundup before they repeated it, so I made a point of listening that night at 11 p.m. Nope, the same roundup was carried with her falling off the chair!

Now there's a station that knows how to re-cycle listeners!

 

[listener-in]

Need I dredge up links to the multiple threads where you've flogged this horse into a fly-infested bloody pulp?

You HIJACKED a thread about technical snafu's to promote your own personal agenda. If you want to reopen the "progressive" talk discussion, please create your own thread. That will make it easier to avoid for those of us who have no interest in participating.

Well now, this thread seems to have slowed down, so I trust that you will be tolerant enough not to make another groundless reference to hijacking, either in upper- or lower-case. Aside from figuratively sticking your fingers in your ears whenever progressive radio is mentioned, it’s not hijacking when, in this market, the subject has an acknowledged connection with the topic under discussion. Yes I do have an agenda (who doesn't?) and if I see an opportunity to promote it, I will - as would you.

listener-in, the problems with CNNH on the radio were not "rare." They were constant. I can't answer your assertion to the effect that you've never heard many problems on other stations, which I am sure is true....although I am unaware of any station in the region carrying CNNH. It's mostly parked on little AMs when the owner can't figure out what else to do with the signal. I'm telling you: almost two years of experience with the feed comprised an unending technical disaster. (Which, not for nothing, is the subject of this thread, not format choices....as Rox has noted.)

The source who told me about AAR would certainly be in a position to know and would have no reason to prefer one format over another. The technical problems were a major reason for dropping the format.

I accept your assurances about CNNH and AAR. Please accept that from experience of listening to comparable stations airing the same combination of networks - in particular, WDTW Detroit and WCPT Chicago - there were not enough technical flaws to be noticeable to this listener's ear. I can’t vouch for what problems these stations may have had behind the scenes, or what corrective actions they may have had to take, but to a listener what counts is what's heard over the air. In a world awash with all kinds of technology, it's hard to make the case that problems with the link between a network and a radio station can't be corrected with relative ease, which suggests that the problems at either end of the link are human rather than technical. (Maybe they are 100% network and 0% station, but somehow I doubt that). Let me guess that they are a product of penny-pinching. BTW I'm also unaware of serious glitches with CNN news on 1520 Buffalo, though the quality of the signal here makes often makes listening a problem during the day and almost impossible at night, and I may easily have missed something.

If WROC’s technical problems with Air America were “a major reason for dropping the format”, I wonder how hard the station shopped elsewhere for the same format. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of such programming, and the best progressive talkers are not at AAR anyway.

 

[Savage]

Again, whether WROC "shopped" for other "progressive" programming to an extent you would find acceptable is not knowable, practically speaking, and is quite beside the point. And again has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

If you want to insist on your technical observations of whether or not there are technical problems with the radio feed of Headline News - please note I'm talking about CNN HLN, NOT the CNN Radio News feed which WWKB carries - so be it. You are a more-or-less casual listener. I am relating our experience with the format as radio people who wired it up, carried it 24-7 and lived with it for a hellish two years. FWIW, syndicator Westwood One was amply aware of the ongoing technical issues. It was a continuous headache for them as well.

"It's hard to make the case that problems between a network and a station....can't be corrected with relative ease?" No, it isn't. I was there. I happen to know what I'm talking about. We tried everything including talks with the HLN executive and Westwood One's then-president, plus ex-WSYR CE and WWOne engineering honcho Conrad Trautmann. It was apparently VERY hard to "correct" the problems 2005 to 2007, because given the resources devoted to the CNNH Radio feed, they weren't corrected.

Maybe it's different now. I was relating my experience with HLN and what I heard about 950's reason for changing to ESPN. I'm sure if "progressive talk" held what WROC owners felt was potential for audience and revenue they would have retained the format. They did something else.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

Speaking of WWKB how about the overnight mess when going from CBS news to "The Joey Reynolds Show" I often heard the network cue on the air that said the Joey Reynolds show was coming up in X minutes. It sounds really bad for a major station to have that on the air. Nobody seems to care anymore. Have they been doing any better with CNN?

 

[yugoidar]

Mike, I know what you mean.  But, can anyone seriously consider KB a major station today?  Unfortunately, those days are long gone.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

Speaking of WWKB how about the overnight mess when going from CBS news to "The Joey Reynolds Show" I often heard the network cue on the air that said the Joey Reynolds show was coming up in X minutes. It sounds really bad for a major station to have that on the air. Nobody seems to care anymore. Have they been doing any better with CNN?

Good point but with 50,000 watts that can be picked up in Europe (it's on YouTube) then I would still classify it as a major station even though it's not a successful one.