Monday, February 04, 2008

NW Arkansas in Superbowl Dark

The Fox affiliate for N.W. Arkansas was off the air and feeds to Dish and Direct TV were also lost. Only Cox Cable had the Fox feed of the entire Superbowl. Is it a comspiracy? First Channel 7 in Little Rock now Fox in N.W. Arkansas. Who will be next. I guess Fox didn't sell enough local spots to make sure they could air them.

At KAAY, Felix McDonald kept the 50,000 watt transmitter at Redfield on the air, and Eddie Graham was originally the studio engineer and production man. He later moved to the sales department. Full story on Eddie and Felix by entering their names in the upper left hand corner search box. Their is no substitute for good engineering, good equipment, and a good emergency game plan. We had a huge propane tank, (see previous posts), a honking generator, and a fallout shelter studio at the transmitter. Now days how many of your local radio stations have emergency power or transmission capacity? In an ice storm here in the Fort Smith area several years ago, 18 signals were off the air, two were on the air but programming was tracked from another city. Only one station was locally live with weather info. All the T.V. stations were on with aluxiliary power. As most T.V. stations go wall to wall local weather coverage it seems that TV is taking over radio's job as local weather provider. Well, except for Fox TV in N.W. Arkansas.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree about emergency power generators at radio stations...we had severe storms pound through Mobile today (2/17/08) and two AM news stations were off the air...I'm going to contact one station manager that I know through our business & ask what their deal is? I supply generators all over the southeast as well as their engine and repair parts...so I'll put her on the spot about not serving the public, if they didn't have emergency power!

Keep up the good work, Doc! Thank you!