What are the obligations? Who has to do what? If there was a crime committed, then its in the hands of the police. If the transmitter was off for a period of time, it was logged in the transmitter log, and ultimately gets reported to the FCC. If programming was affected, it's in the program log. If spots didn't air, the advertisers are due make-goods. If the Dodgers want to complain (as co-owners), they can do that. There are lots of parties involved, and lots of ways to get answers. Someone just needs to ask questions of the right people.
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Why Did KLAC "fail" During World Series' Final Game?
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
What are the obligations? Who has to do what? If there was a crime committed, then its in the hands of the police. If the transmitter was off for a period of time, it was logged in the transmitter log, and ultimately gets reported to the FCC. If programming was affected, it's in the program log. If spots didn't air, the advertisers are due make-goods. If the Dodgers want to complain (as co-owners), they can do that. There are lots of parties involved, and lots of ways to get answers. Someone just needs to ask questions of the right people.
Can anyone describe what actually happen to the to the KLAC 570 signal? Is there audio of the actual air feed when the issue arose?
Was it dead air, carrier on but no audio? Total carrier off meaning some kind RF failure? Distorted, Jittery unlistenable but full carrier or the transmitter/carrier having issues modulating?
That's what I'm not seeing in this thread. What did the listener hear? I know it is hard for a regular listener to differentiate between "Dead Air", carrier on, no modulation and Carrier off. Was there a carrier off then back on like switching to the Aux transmitter but that didn't fix it? Or did the RF signal just go away and never came back for an hour or so.
I think the next piece of the puzzle is answering the above, That would give more insight into what kind of a failure was in process.
The stream question is easy. Why disrupt the current people listening to the stream (either of them) and MLB streaming protocol and how geofencing may have been in play. If KFI was airing a live segment to the internet only at that time, then the archived audio is there for when the host goes on vacation and you need a show or pull segments for the fill in audio. Better yet if they are podcasting another reason to check out their podcast on the iHeart app.
Was it dead air, carrier on but no audio? Total carrier off meaning some kind RF failure? Distorted, Jittery unlistenable but full carrier or the transmitter/carrier having issues modulating?
That's what I'm not seeing in this thread. What did the listener hear? I know it is hard for a regular listener to differentiate between "Dead Air", carrier on, no modulation and Carrier off. Was there a carrier off then back on like switching to the Aux transmitter but that didn't fix it? Or did the RF signal just go away and never came back for an hour or so.
I think the next piece of the puzzle is answering the above, That would give more insight into what kind of a failure was in process.
The stream question is easy. Why disrupt the current people listening to the stream (either of them) and MLB streaming protocol and how geofencing may have been in play. If KFI was airing a live segment to the internet only at that time, then the archived audio is there for when the host goes on vacation and you need a show or pull segments for the fill in audio. Better yet if they are podcasting another reason to check out their podcast on the iHeart app.
Wonder what technician at ABC got blamed for the 1989 World Series earthquake?
Back in 1981, the 49ers made the NFL playoffs for the first time in their history. I was working for a group in Santa Rosa, CA and was going to drive to our sister station in Fort Bragg, a couple of hours to the north.
KCBS carried the 49ers at that time. Great, I can listen to the game on the drive. Then, 15 minutes after the game started KCBS went off the air and remained off for the rest of the trip.
I found out later that a tower crew was on site (along with the transmitter engineer) painting the towers. Along the way they dropped a 5 gallon can of Tnemec tower paint through the roof of a tuning shack. The Tnemec paint bucket (which is Cement spelled backwards) exploded when it hit the floor and coated everything in the building. It took several hours of hard work to clean things up enough to get the station back on the air.
When I started working at KCBS several years later the entire interior of Tower 3's tuning shack still had a non-removable coating of aviation orange tower paint.
KCBS carried the 49ers at that time. Great, I can listen to the game on the drive. Then, 15 minutes after the game started KCBS went off the air and remained off for the rest of the trip.
I found out later that a tower crew was on site (along with the transmitter engineer) painting the towers. Along the way they dropped a 5 gallon can of Tnemec tower paint through the roof of a tuning shack. The Tnemec paint bucket (which is Cement spelled backwards) exploded when it hit the floor and coated everything in the building. It took several hours of hard work to clean things up enough to get the station back on the air.
When I started working at KCBS several years later the entire interior of Tower 3's tuning shack still had a non-removable coating of aviation orange tower paint.
The Broadcasters Desktop Resource newsletter mentions the KLAC problem.
www.thebdr.net
This past week, on the day the Dodgers won the World Series, someone broke into the home radio station - KLAC - in Los Angeles and seriously detuned the phasor. The engineer in this case was alerted immediately, and the station was able to stay on the air, while corrective adjustments were made. (After dark, a lower power was used until the adjustments were finished - but a sister station more than made up coverage for the fans to hear the game.)
This Week
This Week's Newsletter Greetings from your broadcast friends out on the Desert... This is BDR Newsletter 794, Volume 16, #14 for November 6, 2024Here are some things you might want to know about:WHY
www.thebdr.net
Thanks for posting that. So what is the effect of "detuning the phasor?"
If nothing was stolen, maybe this person was a disgruntled Padres or Yankees fan. The chaos and vandalism that occurred in LA when the Dodgers won shows how crazy sports fans can get.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
It would definitely have an effect on the directional pattern and possibly on the radiated power level. Without further detail, I'd be guessing blind as to what it meant precisely in this situation, but it seems obvious that it was serious enough for them to reduce power to prevent going outside the pattern until they could get it back to the licensed parameters.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Who either was clueless about how the phasor works (and just started "dial twisting" at random) or knew just what they were doing (which is somewhat more dangerous, in my view).
The "phasor" is the set of coils and condensers that "allocates" power to each tower in a directional system as well as controlling the amount of power to each tower and the electrical phase relationship of what goes to each tower. Thus, the term "phasor".
Detuning a phasor would change the match of the cable or line coming from the transmitter to the characteristics of the antenna system, causing it to "reflect" power back to the transmitter in what is called "standing wave"... sort of like signal that can't go out the antenna and blocks the full signal just like a stopped up sink.
Would that standing wave damage the transmitter or not necessarily?
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
If left uncorrected for too long, yes.
Most transmitters today have protection. "Smart" transmitters will scale back power until tolerable of shut down.
Very old... mostly plate modulated tube models.... transmitters will see the final tubes suffer due to "power" coming back into the plate circuit (I am trying to use "lay" language) which is the high power "side" of the Radio Frequency tubes and can cause them to severely overheat and, eventually, die. Even many of the older rigs have some kind of protection since a high SWR can be caused by things like a lightning hit hurting the antenna tuning unit, etc. Not just vandalism will cause the problem.
Thanks, I figured there was some kind of “surge protection” built in to most transmitters, but wasn’t sure how it worked.
Standing wave on the transmission line is not really a surge. A "surge" would be a lightning strike or a power line voltage peak. High standing wave ratios are not momentary, they are continuous until fixed and can more like being called "overload".... like trying to run your car in first gear at 60 MPH.
Thanks for explaining that
It's very difficult for me to imagine any member of the general public today, let alone buffoonish "hold my beer" sports rowdies, having the necessary technical knowledge of AM sites to go straight for soft underbelly components as obscure as phasor cabinets. You'd tend to think hacksawing away at guy wires, or breaking into full-size buildings where transmitters could be presumed to exist, would be the first and only things such types would/could imagine setting their sights on to spoil the night for "the enemy's" fans.
Which tells me your latter possibility -- vandals who knew what they were doing -- is the most probable one. Any chance it could have been a disgruntled former employee who picked that particular night to cost the station the largest possible chunk of advertising revenue (including from lasting ill-will for failing them on such an important night)? The only other "knows what they're doing" possibility would be a scrapper, but something tells me even a scrapper couldn't be stupid enough to knock a #2 market station off the air while airing its home team's live world series appearance. Talk about summoning instant attention. Besides, scrappers usually want coax and ground radials.
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The irony in all this is the switch of the game to KFI, which was the Dodgers' outlet in L.A. from the team's arrival in 1958 though the 1974 season. Then Cox, having bought the station from Earle C. Anthony, dumped live sports (not only the Dodgers but the Kings and Lakers as well), which took those teams out of the after-dark ears of countless listeners at least as far east as Chicago when clear channels were really clear.
It's good to know what happened.
It's good to know what happened.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And just like that, the thread that I thought had run its course has a whole new aspect to discuss.
Note to self: Stop being so quick to judge.
Note to self: Stop being so quick to judge.
What is security like at the transmitter site? Are there cameras, an alarm system, or security patrol. Maybe it's time to beef up securing these sites.
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