[BC] WTEM--Chief engineer

[Broadcast List USER]

My memory is essentially the same as Art's.

I think you have to consider the cost of lost ad revenue, only  
considering those that could not be made good, versus the cost to man  
the site.

Another consideration is putting someone's life in harms way JUST to  
keep a station on the air.  Once the water is high enough to get over  
the base insulators, there would be no way for the person in the  
building to leave -- they would be trapped by moving water.  That  
doesn't seem to be a good plan to me.

Of course, the generators could be disabled, and the power cut to the  
building, but who wants to be sitting on a desk, in a dark, water  
filled building waiting for the water go go down?

Lives versus commercial revenue?  No question, lives win.

Lives versus a Redskins game?  No question, lives win.

On Sep 8, 2008, at 3:04 PM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

> Message: 15
> From: "Dana  Puopolo" <dpuopolo at usa.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> My friend Kevin MacNamara built this site. It's well engineered,  
> but ANY site
> will fail without proper maimtenance. Quite frankly, if a major  
> storm (ie: ex
> hurricane) was coming, I would have manned that site for the duration.
>
> But then again, what the hell do I know?
>
> -D
>
> ------ Original Message ------
> Received: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:30:30 AM EDT
> From: Art Reed <areed21774 at aol.com>
>
> Unless the site I toured 8 years ago has been gutted, this is
> surprising.  It had three transmitters; a DX50, a Nautel 10 and a  
> Nautel
> 5.  It had a main and a backup generator.  It had three audio paths to
> the site, STL, phone line, and Intraplex.  It had fail-over  
> circuits for
> everything, and huge UPS'es that ran all of the supporting equipment.
> In those days, nothing short of a cruise missile would take it off the
> air.   The  antenna field is swampy, but the tower insulators are well
> above any possible flood height.
>
> Art Reed
>
> Mark Earle wrote:
>> Jeffrey.P.Bottalico at kp.org wrote:
>>> DCRTV reports that WTEM 980 was off the air Saturday afternoon to
>>> midday Sunday due to weather.  Red Zebra (Dan Snyder of the  
>>> Redskins)
>>> does not have a chief engineer for his cluster.  Penny wise but  
>>> pound
>>> foolish??????
>>>
>> Nah, makes perfect sense. Engineer = $100,000/year or more with  
>> benefits.
>>
>> Off air 12 hours? How much revenue was lost? Less than 100k probably.
>> Pay a contract engineer $500 to get it back on.. still money ahead.
>>
>> Of course, no preventive maintenance, proactive fixing of things,  
>> etc.
>> But that seems to be the trend.