"Trouble" Slides

[notalkallstatic]

Confidence is a nice thing, but remember Murphy's Law. Those words may come back to haunt you one day....

I said SHOULD never need the trouble slide. We've come close, but not quite. Yet...

Beats dead air, at any rate. I wonder what the record is for a broadcast station transmitting a black void of nothingness without putting up a slide or something. Guess things would have to really collapse for that to happen for very long.

In Scranton, PA, several years back, during Thanksgiving, the local CBS affiliate was in black for about an hour and 45 minutes. They had audio, but no video (there was a red thin line going down the center of the screen,) during Primetime! It came to be that their emergency backup switcher crapped out on them, and there was no way to patch around it, until an engineer could come in and figure it out. Every 5 minutes, an announcement would play stating something like “Please Stand By. WYOU is currently experiencing temporary technical difficulties.”

 

[oldiesfan6479]

I wonder what the record is for a broadcast station transmitting a black void of nothingness without putting up a slide or something. Guess things would have to really collapse for that to happen for very long.

The chief engineer (what, each station used to have their own CE? )
would not be thrilled about a long period of black. I'm not sure if it is
still the case, but transmitters didn't take too kindly to it--something
about it causing a "surge" IIRC.

OTOH, a second or two of black wouldn't matter. In the days before
frame synchronizers (which matched external signals with the "house"
sync) MC operators, when coming out of a station break, strived to hit
the net "in black" just before the program came up as you'd get a video
"roll" when going from local to network sync. And if you were a CBS
affiliate, you'd get the bong on the air at the TOH. 8)

Now about that drifting Naval Observatory clock...someone call WUTCO
and see if they really have a wire chief in the local office. ;D

 

[glc]

Confidence is a nice thing, but remember Murphy's Law. Those words may come back to haunt you one day....

I said SHOULD never need the trouble slide. We've come close, but not quite. Yet...

Beats dead air, at any rate. I wonder what the record is for a broadcast station transmitting a black void of nothingness without putting up a slide or something. Guess things would have to really collapse for that to happen for very long.

Well, there is the "World Famous" W61CE in Rutland, VT, which carried nothing but an "Alarm Mode" message on its OTA signal fpr MONTHS. (The cable company picks up the programming directly from the bird.)

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,56315.0.html

 

[Stanislav]

Confidence is a nice thing, but remember Murphy's Law. Those words may come back to haunt you one day....

I said SHOULD never need the trouble slide. We've come close, but not quite. Yet...

Beats dead air, at any rate. I wonder what the record is for a broadcast station transmitting a black void of nothingness without putting up a slide or something. Guess things would have to really collapse for that to happen for very long.

Well, there is the "World Famous" W61CE in Rutland, VT, which carried nothing but an "Alarm Mode" message on its OTA signal fpr MONTHS. (The cable company picks up the programming directly from the bird.)

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,56315.0.html

I'd think LPTVs, which are less professionally run on average than full-power stations, do this sort of thing a lot. Two Florida examples.....there's an LPTV in Orlando on 36 (forget the calls, who cares?) that for the last 4 or 5 months has been on 24/7 running nothing but the screen saver from a DVD player. I can't imagine why they are wasting money on power bills keeping the thing running like that. Then there used to be (don't know if it's still viable) one on 69 up in Perry, near Tallahassee, that didn't run a completely black screen, but for hours on end between shows would have a black screen save for a keyed ID at the top (looked like a real old chyron, too -- probably surplus).

There's the famous incident of Rather walking off the CBS Evening News set and the network running black for several minutes. But, of course, one assumes that most affiliates quickly put up a slide or emergency programming. (We discussed some examples of that in a previous thread quite a while back.)

On the radio side, I've many times heard unattended radio stations that get their programming from satellite broadcast dead air or just an interval signal for long stretches of time when their receiver somehow gets tuned to the wrong channel.

 

[notalkallstatic]

Found 4 videos of trouble slides from the BBC (1&2)
They are from "TVArk." You will need RealPlayer to play these, but it's worth it.

http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/bloopers/index.html

(it's at the bottom of the page)

 

[kyscott]

I wonder what the record is for a broadcast station transmitting a black void of nothingness without putting up a slide or something. Guess things would have to really collapse for that to happen for very long.

The chief engineer (what, each station used to have their own CE? )
would not be thrilled about a long period of black. I'm not sure if it is
still the case, but transmitters didn't take too kindly to it--something
about it causing a "surge" IIRC.

Black causes the visual tube to draw more plate current. Shortens tube life.

When I started working at WALB in Albany Georgia back in the early 90's, the station would stop programming yet leave the transmitter on. The station only stopped programming for about three/four hours, no sense in turning off the filaments just to have to warm them back up, that shortens tube life, too so we just left the transmitter on. Master control would punch up black and go home. I pointed out this little fact, so we then started leaving up color bars. To satisfy FCC ID requirements, put up the "WALB-TV Albany Ga" bug in the lower right hand corner.