WCBS 880 Sched Maintenance Volume Roller-Coaster

[pcmradio]

When I turned on WCBS 880 early sunday morning at 3 a.m., I heard a very low volume and not the normal programming.

There was "The CBS News Weekend Roundup" with various news reports of the week, obviously recorded. The volume would fluctuate between mostly almost nothing to sometimes normal volume. It would also feature various distortions from time to time.

On the "8's", an unnamed "live announcer" would say "the traffic AND the weather", then say "our regular programming will resume shortly, WCBS is performing schduled maintenance", "we now return you to the CBS WORLD NEWS ROUNDUP"(wrong title). THE ANNOUNCER and the traffic sounder HAD PERFECTLY NORMAL VOLUME EACH TIME.

At 4:00 a.m, THE VERY SAME "CBS News Weekend Roundup" started over again from the beginning. There was no national CBS news top-of-the hour.

I can't get over the fact that a major network station wouldn't have more than one, one-hour program to fill in the time during "maintenance", and that the announcer would say the name of the program incorrectly.

Was the studio link disconnected from the trans site during that time?
Where was the news program playing from?
Was the announcer guy AT the trans site, studio or somewhere else?
Why the low and fluctuating volume??

Sorry for all of the questions, it was an interesting hour, too bad I fell asleep to hear how they ended it. How long did that "maintenance" take?

Ralph

 

[DiamondJoe]

> When I turned on WCBS 880 early sunday morning at 3 a.m., I
> heard a very low volume and not the normal programming.
>
> There was "The CBS News Weekend Roundup" with various news
> reports of the week, obviously recorded. The volume would
> fluctuate between mostly almost nothing to sometimes normal
> volume. It would also feature various distortions from time
> to time.
>
> On the "8's", an unnamed "live announcer" would say "the
> traffic AND the weather", then say "our regular programming
> will resume shortly, WCBS is performing scheduled
> maintenance", "we now return you to the CBS WORLD NEWS
> ROUNDUP"(wrong title)...

Volume maintenance, perhaps?<P ID="signature">______________


New York City Radio and TV</P>

 

[abc7Man]

> > When I turned on WCBS 880 early sunday morning at 3 a.m.,
> I
> > heard a very low volume and not the normal programming.
> >
> > There was "The CBS News Weekend Roundup" with various news
>
> > reports of the week, obviously recorded. The volume would
> > fluctuate between mostly almost nothing to sometimes
> normal
> > volume. It would also feature various distortions from
> time
> > to time.
> >
> > On the "8's", an unnamed "live announcer" would say "the
> > traffic AND the weather", then say "our regular
> programming
> > will resume shortly, WCBS is performing scheduled
> > maintenance", "we now return you to the CBS WORLD NEWS
> > ROUNDUP"(wrong title)...
>
> Volume maintenance, perhaps?
>

Its 3am. Big deal! If this happened during the day OK, but they aren't really turning that many listeners away in the wee hours of the morning.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

> Why the low and fluctuating volume??

Something was probably <blink>intermittent</blink>...

 

[autopaint-1]

> I can't get over the fact that a major network station wouldn't have more than one, one-hour program to fill in the time during "maintenance", and that the announcer would say the name of the program incorrectly
> Ralph



Hey, it's 3 AM probably on a weekend and they were doing maintenance. They were probably using the complex audio provided by the file they were playing to take measurements. More importantly, did they legally ID at the top of the hour? Would you have rather they aired tone? In the old days this type of down time was a monthly event.

 

[calstymes]

Ralph wrote:

> When I turned on WCBS 880 early sunday morning at 3 a.m., I
> heard a very low volume and not the normal programming.
>
> There was "The CBS News Weekend Roundup" with various news
> reports of the week, obviously recorded. The volume would
> fluctuate between mostly almost nothing to sometimes normal
> volume. It would also feature various distortions from time
> to time.
>
> On the "8's", an unnamed "live announcer" would say "the
> traffic AND the weather", then say "our regular programming
> will resume shortly, WCBS is performing schduled
> maintenance", "we now return you to the CBS WORLD NEWS
> ROUNDUP"(wrong title). THE ANNOUNCER and the traffic sounder
> HAD PERFECTLY NORMAL VOLUME EACH TIME.
>
> At 4:00 a.m, THE VERY SAME "CBS News Weekend Roundup"
> started over again from the beginning. There was no national
> CBS news top-of-the hour.
>
> I can't get over the fact that a major network station
> wouldn't have more than one, one-hour program to fill in the
> time during "maintenance", and that the announcer would say
> the name of the program incorrectly.

The announcer obviously should not have incorrectly identified the name of the program. The only reason there was only one 1-hour program to fill the time is because the maintenance was not expected to take any longer than approximately 45 minutes.

> Was the studio link disconnected from the trans site during
> that time?

Yes.

> Where was the news program playing from?

Somewhere other than the studio.

> Was the announcer guy AT the trans site, studio or somewhere
> else?

Somewhere else.

> Why the low and fluctuating volume??

Because the audio chain they were using was temporary only for the duration of the maintenance and it was never calibrated to the audio levels from the studio.

> Sorry for all of the questions, it was an interesting hour,
> too bad I fell asleep to hear how they ended it. How long
> did that "maintenance" take?

Because of problems which were encountered with returning from the maintenance, the radio listener was treated to approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes of those fluctuating levels and repeat programming and the internet listener was treated to approximately 8 hours of silence.

> Ralph

Cal Stymes