KUTV 2 is off the air

[Terry]

“2News engineers have identified the interruption source as a broken KUTV antenna tower in the Oquirrh Mountains west of Salt Lake City,”

[CAwasinNJ]

I'm watching the data stream on the over the air signal and it's a mess. Mostly it's what looks like hundreds of tiny pieces of data instead of a couple of dozen like it should be if it was working properly. Maybe random data like the white noise on an analog signal? The proper signal is popping in every once in a while. Obviously the engineers are scrambling to get something back on the air by 7. CBS has 3 premieres tonight and they don't want those wiped out. It would have been so much more convenient if this happened when the only thing in primetime was reruns.

FWIW, through the magic of channel sharing, besides 2.1/KUTV and 2.2/KMYU this is also affecting 14.2/Comet and 14.5/DABL.

[tardiscaptain]

Wish I would have known that earlier. I was wondering if my antenna needed to be adjusted so I was moving it around and re-scanning.

[CAwasinNJ]

CBS programming has preempted KJZZ programming on 14.1 until at least the Late Late Show tonight. They just switched the feed at 7:30. It looks like it's a big problem and will be a late night.

[CAwasinNJ]

The original announcement on KJZZ said the simulcast would last until the Late Late Show. I think I only saw that mentioned once though the crawl continued through primetime. I didn't note exactly when the KUTV transmitter stabilized but both stations were running the same programming for quite a while. KJZZ switched back to its regular feed at 10PM with no fanfare though the crawl during FBI:MW did alert viewers.

Their website (once I could figure out how to view it) says the issue is resolved and that the CBS primetime shows will be available at cbs.com at no charge on Wednesday. It also said that the issue affected Dish Network but not Comcast. It didn't mention DirecTV. It had been a while since I'd heard how either retransmitter was receiving their feeds. At least as far as Dish goes they are apparently just using the OTA signal. Their uplink is presumably somewhere in the Salt Lake area so this makes a lot of sense to me since it's simpler and probably cheaper.

[amanuensis]

This makes me curious. How DOES Comcast acquire it's various tv station feeds? Does it vary?

[kenglish]

The microwave receive dish for KUTV lost a couple of bolts, and was moving out of alignment in the 70 MPH winds...so, not a "broken tower", but a piece of broken hardware ON the tower.
Fortunately, there was a tower crew finishing up on a local job here in town, and rushed up to help.
Comcast gets most of the local stations via their own fiber optic network, which they own and maintain.
AFAIK, DirecTV and DISH are still picked up via OTA at the KTVX studio. KTVX and KUCW are fed from their Master Control there, and it all goes to the satellite companies on fiber.
Many translators still get their signals via OTA, but there are microwave feeds of the signals which are received at Farnsworth and multiplexed to three channels to feed major translator distribution points.

[CAwasinNJ]

Thanks for the insight Ken. I appreciate it.

[kenglish]

It has been noted that this outage occured at roughly the same time as ex-KUTV anchor Shauna Lake reported to jail.
If you remember, the wind blew a balloon in to power lines a couple of years ago, taking KSL off the air, as memorial services began for Bob Welti.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
Doo..doo..doo.doo.😳