[BC] Monitoring IBUZ Secondaries - NOT

[Rich Wood]

------ At 10:43 PM 2/16/2007, Barry Mishkind wrote: -------

>         Interestingly, I received an email response
>         shortly after sending a note to the station.
>         It reads as follows:
>
>Thanks for forwarding this
>
>Yes it is true for a 2 hour period the automation on the HD2 channel was
>accidentally put in 'live assist' instead of satellite. This did NOT
>affect 1080 - only the IBOC hd2
>
>To my knowledge this is the first time it has tripped up in about 8
>months of continuous operation.
>
>I am surprised mr wood is this worked up over this!   I don't know what
>his problem calling was.  We have a full time receptionist you can get
>easily by dialing '0' at the main #.  He is 100% incorrect about the new
>dept VM.  Our newsroom is staffed 24/7  365 and has no VM.

Mr. Wood really doesn't care. It became a challenge to try and reach 
a live person. I dare whoever responded to your email to call each of 
the numbers on the web site. I did. Every single number was answered 
by voicemail. This was during business hours. That included the news 
department. If there's a receptionist I sure couldn't reach her. 
Perhaps he has a secret bat number to get through. An average 
listener using the web site as a source of numbers hasn't a prayer of 
reaching a live human. I even tried the Cingular *1080 traffic number 
and it didn't work. It doesn't work in my area code. I've been 
calling radio stations for syndicators and networks for a couple of 
decades now. I know what voicemail is. I dialed 0 at the main menu 
and it did nothing more than tell me it was an invalid option and 
repeated the menu. This happened not only with WTIC but all stations 
in the Hartford cluster. Nothing but voicemail. Perhaps someone put 
the voicemail into "dead assist" the day it happened.

After reading this I called a couple of friends who affiliate for a 
couple of large networks. Their response about reaching a human at 
this station was a single word: voicemail.

The real issue is that no one realized for 2 hours that the secondary 
was screwing up. I made it clear the analog was fine. The other 
station is still dead, displaying titles and artists. It's been two days now.

I think this experience clearly shows no one, listeners or stations, 
is listening to the secondaries. I'm really beginning to feel sorry 
for Peter Ferrara, the head of the Alliance. He's really busting his 
butt trying to get this albatross off the ground while the stations 
owned by his members chop him off at the knees.

>The [crux] of the problem is that no additional staff are being hired to
>oversee these HD2s.

If there's a receptionist why not give her a cheap receiver just to 
make sure the HD-2 is making noise that makes sense. After all, it's 
our future, I'm told.

Rich