WEJZ's 96.1 minute break

[TommyR]

Tonight, neither Delilah nor John Tesh aired on WEJZ or WSOS respectively. I assume satellite receivers were knocked out of service due to bad weather late in the afternoon.

Both stations went into marathon sets of commercials, PSA's, promos, direct reponse ads, you name it: WEJZ immediately, SOS after 10 minutes of elevator music. WSOS returned to music at 8pm, WEJZ somewhere around 8:35.

So, I wonder...who out there has backup plans or procedures in place?

The first thing that popped into my mind was to play the longest record in the building, then connect with the shows via some sort of temporary internet connection. But I'm guessing there was no such thing available.

Who has any ideas or stories to share?

(I'm not a moderator, but I'd really like to see if this thread can survive without someone attempting to equate this unfortunate incident with Renda supposedly causing the implosion of the radio industry, etc. That's not kool.)

 

[pocket-radio]

Once the automatic pilot is turned on everybody goes home. Nobody is at the helm steering the ship. If the transmitter goes down an engineer is automatically called but in this case the carrier was alive so no call was made to an engineer.

Besides the radio community and the geeks average listeners don’t notice or care. They just change channels and move on.

I guess Fred is programmed to fill dead air with spots and crap.
And if you haven’t noticed WEJZ is now playing 8 spots back to back. How lovely is that?

 

[TommyR]

And if you haven’t noticed WEJZ is now playing 8 spots back to back. How lovely is that?

I remember several years ago it was claimed in promos that "we only stop the music once inside a more music hour," meaning there are two breaks in an hour. I don't think they mention this anymore. But then again, what was the spot load?

Back in the 80's, when WIVY had 40-minute sets of music, Hoyle countered with, "Yeah, and 20 minutes of commercials!"

 

[BobDillehay]

A problem with the Maestro Event Server caused the satellite programming not to air on either station.

Maestro will always play something and since only spots are scheduled during satellite programming, it ran all of the spots, then started the music log for the next day.

You are right about the transmitters notifying engineering. We also have silence sense alarms on all four stations (WEJZ, WMUV, WGNE, and WSOS) that alert both programming and engineering.

Since there was no silence, no one was notified.

The problem was fixed earlier today.

Bob Dillehay
Chief Engineer
Renda Broadcasting of Jacksonville

 

[TommyR]

Ah, thank you for clearing that up. I just had an image in my mind of the last person in the building throwing everything they could at the automation...

This reminded me of a day I ran the Greg Larson Show, and he was late arriving to Wacko's (or was it Box Seats). Anyway, CNN News ended, so I played his first break. Nothing. So I played the second break. Still nothing. So I grab a nearby Smashing Pumpkins CD, cue it to 1979, open the mic, and talk up the post: "Standby for Greg Larson..." (Since I was also the imaging voice, it probably sounded planned.) This would buy me time to load up a string of PSA's or cue a rerun. About 2 minutes in, Greg calls me and says, "Oh, you'll catch helllll for playing muuuuusic." Nothing at all about running late!