Station Disasters

[friendlee]

As promised......I heard the original KSVN burned down. Is this true? Why? When? Where was it originally located? At the tower site in Kanesville or somewhere else in Ogden?

For that matter....any other stories of this sort from Utah radio history?

[henry]

Didn't KISN flood at one point back in the 1980s?

[oldiesfunhouse]

Not exactly what you're looking for but I think what would have been Citadel at the time which is now Cumulus would have definitely considered this a "disaster". I didn't hear this. I just heard about it after the fact. Apparently there was a DJ at KBER who either decided he wanted to quit or found out he was about to get fired. If memory serves, he was doing the Saturday overnight shift. At the end of his shift he put a loop on that was full of obsenities and I guess horrible things about the company. He set it somehow so that it would just play over and over again and then used high powered super glue to make the door of the studio impossible to open and left. I don't know how long the loop ran till someone was able to repair the problem but … I think that might qualify as a man made disaster.

[kenglish]

Aug 17, 2021 4:35:24 GMT -6 henry said:

Didn't KISN flood at one point back in the 1980s?

I think that was during the flooding from the Great Salt Lake. KSL's AM Transmitter site had to be sandbagged, and was only accessible by boat.

Also, there was the day several years ago, when a mylar balloon took out power downtown. It came back quickly enough, but a mechanical failure in the KSL transfer switch wouldn't let it transfer back from generator to commercial power. That only became a real issue because the cooling fans in the basement didn't come on, and the generators overheated and shut down.

[amanuensis]

I remember once a DJ apologizing for how long transitions between songs was taking, and for playing songs not necessarily like what the station usually played, because their computer and the backup computer had failed from a power surge and so he was having to play songs by literally popping CDs in and out of a single-disk CD player hooked into their board.

[CAwasinNJ]

I remember that incident Ken. We covered it here: talkingutahradio.proboards.com/thread/1865/power-outage-ksl

There are a couple of incidents that I know of that aren't local but might be of interest anyway. (If not just skip the rest of this post. )

How would you like to be launching an all-news station and have one of the big stories of the day be that you're off the air? That's what happened August 28 1967 when WCBS(AM) Newsradio 88 in New York was going to launch. Unfortunately the day before a small plane had crashed into the tower that they shared with WNBC(AM) and knocked them off the air. They went ahead with the launch anyway but had to commandeer co-owned WCBS-FM to do it. FM was mostly an afterthought in those days and relatively few people had FM radios. It took a few days to get the AM back on the air.

There was also an incident involving the other tenant of that tower, WNBC(AM), now WFAN. Their traffic reporter Jane Dornacker was doing a helicopter report live on the air when there was a malfunction and the helicopter crashed into the Hudson River. She didn't survive and about 1 million people were listening as it happened. I have the aircheck if anyone wants to hear it but be advised that it's disturbing.

[kenglish]

KSL and the Triad Center have had their share of mishaps over the years. Flash flooding hit the entryway of the cafeteria in the basement in 2015, with three feet of rainwater.

Back when the EPA required all underground fuel tanks be replaced with certified ones, the crew digging next to the front door of KSL hit an improperly-marked water main that fed the building. After hearing that there was water getting inside, we called for help. The City Public Works folks rushed over but, due to 300 West having been recently repaved, they could not find the shut-off valve in the street. Their guy was running around the street, throwing a javelin-like tool at the pavement trying the hear it hit the metal cover, allthewhile dodging lunch-hour cars. We has to call SLCPD to direct traffic.
The huge flood wiped out the entire telephone switch as it found a path through the telephone room.

Another weekend, the roof drains failed beneath the rooftop cooling tower, and all the water flowed down the inside walls of the building's north wing. It caused major damage to everything above the fourth floor, but diverted to the outside before it got to KSL radio's floors. On that same morning, we got reports of a Temple and Genealogy Library in Kentucky (IIRC) flooding due to a plumbing issue. That was a bad day for self-insurance.

[fmdj1]

I don't think it would qualify as disaster, but it certainly was surprising. When I was working for Bob Morey I got a call at my parents house in California while I was gone for Christmas (I still don't know how he got the number as this was pre-cell phone and real internet days) notifying me that the stations (KSRR and then KFTN) would be at a different location when I returned. We had been the last business located in the old Osmond studios after Richard Losee decided to extend his rehab facility from Sundance into the building in Orem and we had experienced a few incidents of vandalism in that building including someone tampering with the STL, which I still wonder about because it was in the rafters above the large sound stage. In a matter of a few days he and Terry Noble, I think primarily by themselves, or maybe with Bill Traue, moved everything and were on-air. He never said what prompted the move, but I doubt it was planned.

[fmdj1]

One more, this one similar to what amanuensis mentioned. Also at KSRR, one year Bob and I were down at NAB and the automation failed. Again, pre-cell days so I didn't find out until I got back (Bob stayed in Las Vegas a few more days than me), but Mike was running cassettes on loop, probably from recordings made for ASCAP monitoring. I had recently gotten a CD burner (they were still new at the time) so I brought my computer tower down to the station and we burned several CDs to run in a carousel until Bob got back.
As a side note, we ended up running the CD method for awhile longer as the drive that failed was a SCSI drive and, by that point in time, they were getting rare and expensive, so Bob opted to move to a new automation system. Sadly we went from an old, DOS-based but very reliable DAD system, to a new crappy BSI WaveStation system that loved to crash.

[oldiesfunhouse]

I found the Jane Dornacker recording on YouTube. I never knew about this incident until now! Wow!!! She was a pro till the end. She didn't say anything that would have created problems for WNBC with the FCC. I'm afraid if I had been in that helicopter there would have been some expletive deletives that would come, unbidden, out of my mouth. Apparently she had been in another helicopter crash several months before and survived that one. Spoiler alert, the final words we hear her say before we lose the signal are "HIT THE WATER, HIT THE WATER!!! I guess the pilot did survive. That would be hard. I guess Jane was a singer and a comedian too. She sounded like a neat lady. 39 years young. Very tragic! Thank you for sharing that with us.

[CAwasinNJ]

Sorry to disagree with you oldiesfunhouse but I doubt that FCC regulations were even a thought in her mind at that moment. Yes, she was in another crash 6 months earlier. She was actually afraid to fly for several months after that one. Helicopter flying isn't for the faint of heart even under normal conditions and having been through a crash once and then having it happen again certainly qualifies as an extraordinary condition. The FCC levies fines at its discretion. Just because a rule is broken doesn't automatically mean a person or company will be fined. Context matters. I would have to say that given the circumstances even if she had sworn a blue streak that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush there is practically no chance there would have been a fine. The story you gave earlier about KBER isn't quite as clear-cut to me, but I wouldn't think there would be a fine there either. What you described was an employee going rogue, not something under the company's control. For example, remember the famous Janet Jackson Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction"? As far as I know the only fine was levied against CBS, not any of the other companies that owned CBS affiliates that broadcast the show. The non-owned affiliates had no idea what was about to come down from the satellite. CBS corporate sibling MTV produced that show and IIRC the incident was judged to be deliberate. But back to the KBER thing; outside of the safe harbor times (6AM-10PM) you can actually do anything you want though most stations wouldn't dare.

[oldiesfunhouse]

Sorry if I seemed insensitive. Of course FCC regs were the furthest things from her mind and no one in the world would have even considered fining WNBC for anything she would have said in those circumstances. I think traffic copters and planes are becoming rarer. I think big market stations might still use them but I know KSL and, I think, all the stations here have gone to people sitting in a nice safe studio looking at cameras giving the reports utilizing them. Now that those cameras exist, it's probably a lot cheaper to do it that way too. I remember in the 90s KSL had a guy named Duane Southwick giving traffic reports from an airplane. "Duane in the plane," they called him sometimes. He called it the KSL air alert. Then, later, the eye in the sky. Andy Farnsworth used to do his traffic reports from a plane. On KKDS/KDYL with Mark and Gayle Van Wagner in the morning and Danny Kramer in the afternoon he went by the name Joel Andrews. I remember a guy that was on several stations doing traffic reports from a plane named Arlin Summers. We could make a whole separate thread about traffic reporters. KODJ had a lady that went by Lucy in the Sky with Traffic. The Citadel stations had General Gridlock, sir! Tara McMullen who also went by Terry Miller. There was a lady named Angel Martinez that used to work here doing traffic. I last heard her not long ago on KFI in Los Angeles still doing traffic. Leslie Scott aka Lee West I think might be exclusive to KSOP FM and AM now as a traffic reporter.

[amanuensis]

Aug 20, 2021 8:20:47 GMT -6 oldiesfunhouse said:

Sorry if I seemed insensitive. Of course FCC regs were the furthest things from her mind and no one in the world would have even considered fining WNBC for anything she would have said in those circumstances. I think traffic copters and planes are becoming rarer. I think big market stations might still use them but I know KSL and, I think, all the stations here have gone to people sitting in a nice safe studio looking at cameras giving the reports utilizing them. Now that those cameras exist, it's probably a lot cheaper to do it that way too. I remember in the 90s KSL had a guy named Duane Southwick giving traffic reports from an airplane. "Duane in the plane," they called him sometimes. He called it the KSL air alert. Then, later, the eye in the sky. Andy Farnsworth used to do his traffic reports from a plane. On KKDS/KDYL with Mark and Gayle Van Wagner in the morning and Danny Kramer in the afternoon he went by the name Joel Andrews. I remember a guy that was on several stations doing traffic reports from a plane named Arlin Summers. We could make a whole separate thread about traffic reporters. KODJ had a lady that went by Lucy in the Sky with Traffic. The Citadel stations had General Gridlock, sir! Tara McMullen who also went by Terry Miller. There was a lady named Angel Martinez that used to work here doing traffic. I last heard her not long ago on KFI in Los Angeles still doing traffic. Leslie Scott aka Lee West I think might be exclusive to KSOP FM and AM now as a traffic reporter.

And then there's the traffic reporter who ended her traffic report with a prayer on FM 100 awhile back. I imagine that must be legendary now at Bonneville. I did a quick Google search and it seems like she may have been sick and had a bad effect from medicine she had taken. kffm.com/traffic-report-into-prayer/

[CAwasinNJ]

Sorry if you thought that I thought you were being insensitive, oldiesfunhouse. I didn't. I just had a different opinion and and wanted to explain why.

[CAwasinNJ]

I'm going to continue pushing the definition of disaster. It kind of depends on your perspective. These could be considered personal disasters, or at least problems, right? I also don't want to get too pedantic.

It looks like we never talked about Brooke Graham passing out during a live shot on KUTV.  KUTV even posted it themselves on YouTube.

There's also a really interesting full write-up on the incident at what looks to be her and her sister's real blog.

twintestedblog.com/the-fainting-spell/

If I were running the assignment desk I'd want to have a frank discussion about whether she should be assigned stories like that again.  What if there was a rock behind her?