Fisher Plaza: Fire in the hole!

[SeattleObserver]

http://oregonmediacentral.com/2009/07/katu-kval-disrupted-by-fire-at-fisher-plaza#comments

KATU was forced to use its (only?) satellite truck to keep KOMO on-air. Fortunately for them, Fisher has 2 ABC affiliates in this region!

[TheBigA]

The concerned American public needs to demand "the Messiah" at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue order a rollback of the corporatization of radio and television remind and demand that broadcasters of their duty to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.  Having a situation where a broadcasting station does not have redundancies to prevent a total collapse is totally unacceptable.

This may come as a surprise to you, but the government itself doesn't have a lot of the "redundancies" that you'd want broadcasters to have.  We discovered that on 9-11, and there have been several other very similar occurances where planes have crashed into buildings, including the White House.  So don't expect the government to make requirements on private businesses that it itself can't sustain.

If you remember, New York City's disaster center was actually located in the World Trade Center, so when 9-11 happened, the city was completely screwed.  Plus you had different departments using different communications networks, and the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.  Are these really the people you want in charge of disaster planning?

The Department of Homeland Security was created to oversee this very issue, and their main thrust in the last 8 years has NOT been to put any responsibility on broadcasters, but rather on local emergency officials.  So there is NO federal plan requiring broadcasters to set up any structure, but simply follow local officials.

[swhyde1980]

I think, during any emergency, a "backup operations" center should be at least 25+ miles from the main center, if not in another market.  Olympia, Tacoma, Everett, Mount Vernon, or even Bremerton should be a place of operations for news operations during emergency times.  KING 5 I believe has an small place in Olympia, where reporters do reports from time to time for their Olympia Bureau, so they are probably already set for an emergency (and for NWCN as well I would think), as well as a small, auxillary tower on Queen Anne.  KCPQ-Q13 has KBTC's facilities in Tacoma to use as a backup (I know....I've worked there!).  KOMO and KIRO don't seem to have any backups. 

As far as anything transmitter-wise, Tiger Mountain and Gold Mountain should be setup as backup transmitting locations for all these stations (KCPQ has an auxillary transmitter tower on Gold Mountain).  With KOMO owning KUNS now, they should setup a backup transmitting/ENG facility on West Tiger.  KCPQ I think has enough of an agreement, to use KBTC to re-broadcast emergency news and information (which would also carry over to KCKA and K65BU) should their transmitter/tower ever go down.

I think KOMO should use KCTS as an "emergency" facility, should things go wrong, unless they want to send their anchors 200 miles down to Portland at KATU, and then transmitt via sattellite back to KOMO's transmitter.  KIRO....I don't know what they would do, if things went wrong??  (I think KOMO and KCTS have a closer relationship). 

[swhyde1980]

Too late to modify my last post....but here's what I found on YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT7LNnb4NUM

KOMO 1000 was a trooper in this whole disaster.  They did a great job, but I think for next time this happens, sound suppression should be installed in that room, as I think the background noise was from the KOMO-TV transmitter in the background...  Otherwise, I think it makes a nice emergency broadcast center, although kinda cramped.

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

I am a bit confused ... you mention you think 25+ miles is a good minimum standard, and then propose KCTS as a KOMO backup ... which is about .25 miles!!  The decimal may be the "iffy" part of the equation??!  Good idea, though.  CBS makes it a policy to do disaster drills to be prepared for various emergencies.  They walk though things like "we just had a major earthquake and can't use our studios.  Now what??"   Computer operations companies do this all the time too.

[swhyde1980]

I saw my mistake and was too late to clarify that before radio-info cut off my time to modify my post....  But in an earthquake or other emergency (I sound like an old EBS announcer...lol), not all places would be taken out of operation or destroyed in a given area.  So KOMO could use KCTS as a place of operations if something happened to Fisher Plaza, but KCTS's building continued to operate.  But doesn't KCTS have a place in Vancouver?  Even if it's just a business office, maybe they have a room to convert into a makeshift studio?  And Fiber/Microwave stuff back to Seattle?  It's on the other side of the border, but I don't think the FCC would mind in an emergency?  I think if it was something like a bad earthquake, or something, I think something from BC could be used to broadcast back to Seattle?  (Have those passports ready!)

I think another place of operations during an emergency would be TVW, as they just built a new operations facility there in Olympia.  It has been known though that PBS stations, and state-run cable networks that broadcast stuff from a state capital, have served as emergency operations for commercial TV stations.

The closest Cox-run station for KIRO, is KTVU and KICU in San Francisco.... I think if there was an emergency, they'd be able to deliver programming to KIRO, but it would probably take hours to do (while KIRO was in "dead air").  KTVU is a FOX affiliate, and KICU is independent.  If they got a CBS feed and programming KIRO normally has, they'd have to borrow some satellite time or fiber-optic time from someone, to get that programming to KIRO, all the way up here.

[kyliebastel]

I think, during any emergency, a "backup operations" center should be at least 25+ miles from the main center, if not in another market.  Olympia, Tacoma, Everett, Mount Vernon, or even Bremerton should be a

Hey love-muffins, Kylie here! Didja miss li'l ol' me? LMAO! 

In the kind of smoking-hole-in-the-ground scenario of which you speak, one would presume the EAS had taken control of broadcasting, in which case only KIRO-AM would need to stay on-air to feed the audio signal from "ECOMCOM."  Whether or not they could is another question!  Is Kylie right or is Kylie right?  According to the FAS blast calculator, SEA can absorb up to a 1 MT hit at the Local Area Target (K.C. Airport) and KIRO-AM should be able to avoid vaporization or secondary blast effects and keep pumping out either Luke Burbank or Official News & Information ...

More rudimentary or routine emergencies like earthquakes, etc., the public interest is served as long as at least one broadcaster survives so if KCPQ-TV can use KBTC-TV as a backup great, everyone else can power down. From a less-lofty perspective than the public interest, i.e. revenue protection, since local disasters are huge money losers who cares if you go off-air? It's not worth the up-front investment for backups so you can keep broadcasting during an exigency of such an extreme nature that you probably would have to axe all your ads. 

[LITTLEBOYBLUE]

We've got two issues going ... one is the ability to broadcast to the market in event of geographic emergency (city is hit).  Think about how Katrina was handled...competing broadcasters pooled efforts to find best facility and everyone shared the content and the feed.

Then there's the one broadcaster goes down and wants to protect their own content & business ($$) issues.  As was pointed out in this thread, that's where it pays to have friends (or sister stations who can help, as KATU did for KOMO).  Going back to the computer analogy, one of the "simple" things we used to do at KING was make business computer backups and trade with Pemco.  Our backups went in their safe, theirs in ours'.

At very least, it would be good idea for music stations to prepare an audio track (even if CD) that contains enough music to avoid HUGE repetition and  few legal ID's.  Maybe update that twice a year (unless you're an oldies station!!).  Then you have something to feed to transmitter while giving yourself time to get the triage bearings.

[Bongwater]

What I couldn't understand is why they couldn't have simulcasted KPLZ on 570 kHz instead of running dead air. Would have made it worthwhile to listen to for a change (DXers would have LOVED it.)

Yeah, I know a simulcast of KOMO Radio would have made more sense, but God knows they had enough damn problems already in that deafening transmitter room without spitting out another set of call letters and a brief explanation that this was all just a massive snafu at Fisher Plaza and NOT a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine or a sinister plot against KVI by the Obama administration and their evil "liberal agenda". Which from typical KVI blabber, one can only suspect.....

So what the hell. It isn't like anybody LISTENS to KVI anyway.....

And speaking of KOMO radio during this mess, if those folks don't get some MAJOR awards for plugging on the way they did in the worst of all possible circumstances, there is NO justice in this world......

[boiseengineer]

Remember, EAS will not provide continuous coverage, only "bulletins". If the EAS is all a station is broadcasting there will be a lot of dead air.