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When Computers Crash on Live TV

Somebody needs to post this video on Youtube! Totally beats the WGN thing with Robert Jordan!
 
Hoosierky said:
WXIN's computer crashed this morning during the morning show. However, they kept the webcam going. This was way better than the infomercial that run on-air.

http://www.livestream.com/fox59news...95e0&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
Click to expand...

So the one tape they could "find" to air (bypassing the automation which crashed hard -- from what the anchors said) ... was an infomercial? I woulda just put up color bars. I guess if they couldn't run their "spots" due to no automation ... running a 30 minute infomercial was the next best bet.

Here in Cols Ohio once.. the NBC station had their automation crash during the evening news.. they ended up putting on MSNBC until they could get things back up.
 
better than WANE-TV one night when the fiber that feeds their network programming failed and they sat in a green screen (the fiber receiver makes a green screen when there's no program video) for a while and then a logo slate. Mega fail. Nobody could figure out how to put something else on... this was a few years ago, now I think they have an emergency plan.

The best situation has a plan in place to at least go to a patch panel and bypass the automation...granted you have SOMEBODY in house that knows where to patch in a tape deck or the production switcher. The system I helped put in at GPTV in Atlanta GA had a patch FOR EVERY SINGLE SOURCE coming in (tape decks, sat. receivers, audio boards) and going out. If there was trouble they had a work-around. Not hard to engineer into a system, it JUST TAKES MONEY. Big Picture Broadcasting.
 
Hoosierky said:
The quote of the year was said on the 2nd piece:

"No matter how much money you spend, windows will still
crash!"
Click to expand...

just think they could use linux. it costs nothing. and it is more reliable.
 
Juan Bodley said:
better than WANE-TV one night when the fiber that feeds their network programming failed and they sat in a green screen (the fiber receiver makes a green screen when there's no program video) for a while and then a logo slate. Mega fail. Nobody could figure out how to put something else on... this was a few years ago, now I think they have an emergency plan.

The best situation has a plan in place to at least go to a patch panel and bypass the automation...granted you have SOMEBODY in house that knows where to patch in a tape deck or the production switcher. The system I helped put in at GPTV in Atlanta GA had a patch FOR EVERY SINGLE SOURCE coming in (tape decks, sat. receivers, audio boards) and going out. If there was trouble they had a work-around. Not hard to engineer into a system, it JUST TAKES MONEY. Big Picture Broadcasting.
Click to expand...

Of course, you have to have some standby programming available to run on the tape deck/whatever. Since there is very little chance you have every spot available on tape (and very little chance you have enough tape decks to load a full break's worth of spots) things are going to look ugly if the automation goes down. Sure, you could avoid the situation by ensuring you had enough decks -- which could be loaded quickly enough -- and every spot & program on tape -- and always have someone in the station who knows how to do it -- but at that point, you might as well get rid of the automation & run the whole thing manually, the old fashioned way.

And if your competition is willing to go with automation, you'd better not count on being able to compete.

It's easier to back up a public station, (at least a public TV station) where breaks are less frequent, more predictable, and contain fewer elements.
 
w9wi said:
It's easier to back up a public station, (at least a public TV station) where breaks are less frequent, more predictable, and contain fewer elements.
Click to expand...

That is true. I should note I am thinking from the 90s, when tape was THERE. There's a different mindset in TV now that I didn't think of when I posted. "Make post, insert foot." So to speak.
 
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