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WHDH Meltdown

O

odomski

Guest
If you happened to be watching WHDH's 11:00 news last night, you will know what I'm about to discuss. Immediately, after the network programming, they sat in black for a few seconds...then Randy Price and Christa Delcamp appeared. Randy said they were having technical problems, but they would still bring us the news. Christa tried to talk about the Isreal/Lebanon violence...but she simply couldn't handle the fact that she didn't have a teleprompter. She's not really good at ad-libbing. Randy handled the situation like the true pro he is. Then, they ran a commercial break...came back and tried to run a Dan Hausle "package." The video sat paused on the air for about 30 seconds...then the tape ran with no reporter voice track. They went back to the anchor team and to another commercial break. Around 11:07, they gave an apology on how they couldn't give us the news tonight. They aired MSNBC for the rest of the half-hour.

Technology at it's best before our very eyes.
 
Ahhhh. That's Great! I wish I had seen that. I often watch 7 News because I think it's the best in Boston. I'm also a big fan of Fox 25 News at 10 which I happen to watch even more.

When things like this happen it allows you to see who truly has talent and who are just talking heads with a script. It sounds like last night it was easy to seperate the two.

A Good anchor can adlib. A bad one can't. It's as simple as that. Sorry to hear that WHDH had to be put to the test though. That's a POP Quiz which no Television anchor wants to have to take.
 
I saw the entire thing...I thought maybe they would have brought in hard copies of the stories and that they would do their best at reporting the news off paper....it reminded me of one night when we lost power at the station due to a storm..we got some things up and running, but i was so flustered i threw on songs with DEAD SEGUES....trying to get everything up and running and trying to do breaks was a nightmare...we rely so much on technology, I don't think some of us know what to do when a wrench is thrown in the mix..
Randy's mic was fine, but at first I had a hard time hearing the woman when she was talking.
 
I wonder what happened exactly. It sounds like a more serious problem then just the teleprompters going down. Mics didn't work, Video was frozen. No show opening, No audio on the Dan Hausle "package".

It sounds to me like the Director didn't show up and they had no one else in the control room who knew how to direct the damn newscast.
 
I work nights and have a break at 11 pm; I usually listen to the local news via an AM-FM-TV Sound radio and I was also wondering what was going on. I went back and forth between (sound from) Ch 4, Ch 5, and when I went back to 7 it sounded like a long-form piece on JonBenet Ramsey and I thought, "Maybe they had some kind of sporting event that ran late, and the news will be on late tonight--this might be a news magazine show from NBC...but what was that I heard earlier?
Something about 'technical difficulties'..."
 
Good to see Boston's Tabloid News Station proving how shallow their team is with the exception of Randy Price.

Bright colors and snappy cuts can only take you so far even for the average under educated Channel 7 viewer.

As the late great Jack Cole once said on Channel 7 ..." Now back to more alleged news."
 
Wow, no newscast in a major city like Boston becuase of problems like that? If anyone recorded this, pleae post the video.
 
Shawn O'Domski said:
If you happened to be watching WHDH's 11:00 news last night, you will know what I'm about to discuss. Immediately, after the network programming, they sat in black for a few seconds...then Randy Price and Christa Delcamp appeared. Randy said they were having technical problems, but they would still bring us the news. Christa tried to talk about the Isreal/Lebanon violence...but she simply couldn't handle the fact that she didn't have a teleprompter. She's not really good at ad-libbing. Randy handled the situation like the true pro he is. Then, they ran a commercial break...came back and tried to run a Dan Hausle "package." The video sat paused on the air for about 30 seconds...then the tape ran with no reporter voice track. They went back to the anchor team and to another commercial break. Around 11:07, they gave an apology on how they couldn't give us the news tonight. They aired MSNBC for the rest of the half-hour.

Technology at it's best before our very eyes.
Click to expand...

What!? And nobody taped this for Youtube? Urghh!

Must have been a computer glitch. Or could it be switching digital line type of thing? Does WHDH do their own switching?
 
Julius: post the video where? You can't post videos on this board.

Also, why do you care about WHDH Julius? What interests you about Boston television news? Don't you have enough to talk about on the Philly boards? Aren't you too busy talking about ESPN Radio in Philadelphia and why it's on a station in Trenton, why you think WIP is a "crappy station," and Penn Quakers play-by-play? Every message board I visit, you're there.

As "Fred Flintstone" said on the Philadelphia radio board....STOP IT!!!!
 
From reading other television related blog/gossip sites, the word is the WHDH Meltdown was caused by their new computer system crashing. The station recently went "tapeless." Meaning, the stories are being played on the air via some type of computer system. Word is the new system crashed about 40 minutes before the 11:00 show, and they weren't able to get it back up and running properly. I'm not saying this is the truth...it's just what I have read on other "gossip" sites.
 
Shawn O'Domski said:
From reading other television related blog/gossip sites, the word is the WHDH Meltdown was caused by their new computer system crashing. The station recently went "tapeless." Meaning, the stories are being played on the air via some type of computer system. Word is the new system crashed about 40 minutes before the 11:00 show, and they weren't able to get it back up and running properly. I'm not saying this is the truth...it's just what I have read on other "gossip" sites.
Click to expand...

That's what I've been trying to figure out since I first heard about this story a few days ago. The station I work for went tapeless about 18 months ago. We've had occasional serious problems but never came anywhere near cancelling a newscast!

Generally, two separate computer systems are involved: one contains the audio & video, a separate system handles the text functions of script editing, ordering of stories, and timing. The latter system tells the former system which video clips it wants when, and sends the command to roll them. This latter system also feeds scripts to the teleprompter.

A crash of the latter system would cause serious problems. It would deny access to all scripts. It would prevent the teleprompter from operating. It would make it impossible to roll video clips via the normal method. This includes the little banners & intros that I suspect most of us don't notice but that eat up a fair bit of the show. It would deny access to the planned list of stories & their lengths. Trying to operate without it would be pretty chaotic.

On the other hand... at least in our case, scripts are printed before the show, so that the anchors can review them for errors. (but not 40 minutes before the show, so if the system crashed that early they may not have been printed yet) There are alternate methods for rolling video clips, and if worse comes to worse our editors can dump their stories out to tape & bring the tapes down to master control. We'd have to drop a LOT of video (because the alternate methods are a lot slower & the operators couldn't keep up) but we'd sure get a show on the air. Timing on paper would be pretty poor - we might well clip the subsequent program or have to dump out in the middle of a package. It'd be pretty ugly but it would work.

I wonder if...

- There was a meltdown in a basic piece of infrastructure that affected multiple systems? Like the feed to a breaker panel failed? Or an Ethernet router died, breaking the connections between computer systems?
- There were multiple unrelated failures? (Murphy's Law!)
- The failure wasn't in a computer system at all, but in some other piece of technical gear, like maybe the video switcher?
- It was (as suggested by someone else) a human failure rather than a technical one? I.e., a director didn't show up and the non-director who tried to fill in wasn't up to the job?
- WHDH had additional equipment automated beyond what we do. Newer automations are able to control the video switcher and even the audio console - stations that have automated these functions have probably laid off the people who used to do them - if the automation fails there simply isn't anyone there to operate the backup, and since the director can't be in two places at once (s)he can't run the show manually.

I'd imagine there are lessons for a lot of us here, not just for the folks in Boston!
 
Shawn O'Domski said:
Julius: post the video where? You can't post videos on this board.

Also, why do you care about WHDH Julius? What interests you about Boston television news? Don't you have enough to talk about on the Philly boards? Aren't you too busy talking about ESPN Radio in Philadelphia and why it's on a station in Trenton, why you think WIP is a "crappy station," and Penn Quakers play-by-play? Every message board I visit, you're there.

As "Fred Flintstone" said on the Philadelphia radio board....STOP IT!!!!
Click to expand...
Because this topic interest me and there was no newscast on a major TV station last night.
 
I find it odd for Jim Thistle to defend WHDH... back when I was in his classroom, his philosophy was "no matter what happens, you must find a way and you MUST MAKE AIR!"

Regardless, Thistle's a great man you can learn a lot of great things from.
 
The WHDH meltdown makes national news

Fark has linked to the Herald account.

I remember reading something like that happening at KYW-3 in Philadelphia around 20 years ago.
 
This is mainly for Julius May's benefit, basically so he will leave us alone over here with his silly demands:

Julius: do a search for WHDH on You Tube and you will find the WHDH Meltdown on there. Now, can you go back to the Philly boards? Thank you.
 
The important thing to remember is to look how technology can be the breaking point for any broadcast operation. Sure, in radio if the automation goes down people can program off of cds since many stations still have this still in their on-air studios. With tv news I doubt that people are going to do a similar form of back-up and edit a tape as well as electronic editing. Without that sort of back redundancy there's no way newcasts can play actualities unless they archive or backup their edited pieces to tape and have the old technology to play them into their on-air system.

So far I've been unable to view the meltdown video but I could only imagine there weren't too many happy people in the control room that night.
 
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