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Starguide Problems? ABC?

PTBoardOp94

PTBoardOp94

A number of my stations went off the air at about 7:18 eastern time today. The outage lasted 8 minutes. The Starguides said they were acquiring signal. Happened with both ABC and Jones, but not Learfield (who is served by Digicievers, not Starguides).

Anyone else have this problem? Seems strange that half a dozen Starguides on different dishes in different towns would simultaneously stop getting signal in good weather.
 
I was told by ABC last night that a power outage occurred at the Vernon Valley uplink. Happens to the best of them I guess...

Testing123
 
About what I thought, since PRN vanished at the same time as the ABC feeds. (PRN is fed by ABC Satellite).

My ABC AC came back quickly, but the ABC Classic Rock was off for about an hour and a half. Something need to be reset.
 
test123 said:
I was told by ABC last night that a power outage occurred at the Vernon Valley uplink. Happens to the best of them I guess...
Click to expand...

You'd think they would have something like back up generators and UPS systems for things like this.
 
To add to the confusion, my one Starguide, which has been running without a hitch for a year or more, now seems confused--and occasionally faulting. Luckily I have a spare on hot standby--just switched cables. Unfortunately, that one only has two audio cards in it--need three: Classis Rock/ ABC flex news and the PRN/MRN feeds.

Hopefully it will recover from this brief separation from its satellite by the time of the next Nascar race.
 
From being a supervisor there back in the 1980's I'm sure Vernon Valley has generators and UPS's. Sometimes even the best of plans get foiled, but if I can call some buddies it may be possible to get the scoop on what really happened. I remember sometimes a very intense rain fall could temporarily wipe out an uplink signal. Sometimes UPS's fail also.
 
ontheair247 said:
From being a supervisor there back in the 1980's I'm sure Vernon Valley has generators and UPS's. Sometimes even the best of plans get foiled, but if I can call some buddies it may be possible to get the scoop on what really happened. I remember sometimes a very intense rain fall could temporarily wipe out an uplink signal. Sometimes UPS's fail also.
Click to expand...

Yep, when you don't check the batteries!
 
kyscott said:
ontheair247 said:
From being a supervisor there back in the 1980's I'm sure Vernon Valley has generators and UPS's. Sometimes even the best of plans get foiled, but if I can call some buddies it may be possible to get the scoop on what really happened. I remember sometimes a very intense rain fall could temporarily wipe out an uplink signal. Sometimes UPS's fail also.
Click to expand...

Yep, when you don't check the batteries!
Click to expand...

Agreed! Some of the best UPS units today will even send you an e-mail when the batteries get low, etc.
 
And when I called New York about 30 minutes later asking the cause of the outage, the first answer was "what outage" and then tried to tell me it was only about 5 minutes. Thousands of stations were affected, and ABC didn't even bother to send out an explanation...

I have several Starguides; this little outage cost me several minutes on 3 of my stations. Sure, we plugged in emergency discs for the music stations, but hard to cover Michael Savage...

My 4th station rolled along nicely because it uses Dial-Global (Westwood One) programming.

Our backup power takes 15-30 seconds.

Maybe they've cut back so much that they can't properly attend to things? Weather problems and occasional dropouts I can understand; this type of thing, however, should at least merit a brief explanation or apology from the network.
 
Bill...

I also called and was told right away about the failure at Vernon Valley. I was told the time it began and the time it ended.

I received an e-mail from ABC on Tuesday with a brief explanation of the problem. I work for a network that uses ABC Satellite Services for delivery.

Not sure who provides Michael Savage but I would think it is not produced by ABC. The Michael Savage Network should give you an explanation as to why they were off the air...

Important to note that this was not a problem with ABC's gear. ABC does not operate the Uplink. SES Americom does. ABC is a client of SES Americom.

I was told yesterday by ABC it was mulitiple problems. I was told over the phone and didn't take notes so this is the best I can remember...They think the power glitched and a UPS failed which caused the HPA to shut off. The monitoring system also failed so it appeared as if the HPA was operating properly. Once they had determined that the reason they were off was due to the HPA they were able to switch to a backup. I was told they have three available.

In the almost 20 years we have been using ABC this is the first time I can remember a failure such as this. Knowing the folks up there I think they will do their best to not have it happen again...

t123
 
Savage would be distributed by TRN owned by Mark Masters (son of Roy Masters that bizzare English-sounding radio preacher). They aren't the absolute best network out there IMHO... Not the worst but certainly not the best either. ABC runs a better ship.

On a side note, Michael Alan Weiner a.k.a Mr. "Savage", from what I've heard, is nearly a lunitic. The man has three houses in which is has an ISDN setup. If he doesn't like what the neighbors are doing in one house, he'll run over to the next. The poor board op at TRN gets to play russian roulette with the three ISDN numbers until the nut's voice appears at one of them, hopefully. There is a pretty famous now clip of Savage unloading on a board op just before (he thought) going on the air. Turns out the board op potted his pottyness up early and the listening audience got a good earful of him. He is a very smart person, but to the point of near insanity and instability. Mark Masters is a good one to have to deal with him though. Listening to five minutes of his dad leads me to believe he has been well trained on how to deal with such people. LOL!
 
Two of my FM stations use ABC Satellite 24/7 programming except for morning drive.... Hot AC and AC. Neither sent me an email regarding the failure. My AM uses ABC News, and did not receive an email from them either.

I understand the TRN thing, but in the past we have occasionally had a failure and we received a memo about it.
 
Plus no answer in NY or Dallas. We're satellite because the competitive nature of the market no longer supports manned operations (stand alone FM vs. two six-station clusters)...we just happened to have a board op. in studio because we were running an hour long PRN show. Nice to know what is going on so we can plan a work-around.
 
TomT said:
Plus no answer in NY or Dallas. We're satellite because the competitive nature of the market no longer supports manned operations (stand alone FM vs. two six-station clusters)...we just happened to have a board op. in studio because we were running an hour long PRN show. Nice to know what is going on so we can plan a work-around.
Click to expand...

Sorry Tom, I disagree about the lack of manned operations approach. You're talking about two markets in the Top 5, so there's no reasson to claim manned operations are unneeded.
 
ABC/Dallas Montford Rd. had people there--you just couldn't get to them on the phone. I agree that N.Y. and Dallas need to be manned. I am in market #255, and it doesn't make economic sense for us to be manned 24/7.
 
New York WAS manned. As I noted in my first post, I talked with them within 45 minutes after the outage. My issue was that no one at any level sent out a memo to us following the incident.
 
We've become suspicious of even a new UPS. Like to let them sit & run in the shop for a week or so since a new APC weh had just put in got stupid and took a studio down. They sent us a new replacement immediately, unlike the group that took over Best.
 
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