[BC] unscheduled moments of scilence

[Mark Durnberger]

I still believe the all-time winner in this undeclared contest is the late 
Red Williams, GM of WLOL-1330 in Minneapolis.

The remote transmitter site had a single RCA BTA-5, prone to weazeling out 
from time to time.  One afternoon she dumped, and within a couple of minutes 
the call came from 'downtown'.

"What's going on?" yells Red.

"We're off the air, Red".

"Well for gawd's sake, make an announcement!"

Regards,

Mark Durenberger

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Allen Sherrill" <warp99 at hotmail.com>

I think that was a fairly common idea among PDs at the time.

I was working at a station in the midwest at about that time.  I was getting 
ready to change one hop of the STL to a T-1 circuit.  I told the PD I needed 
to take the station down for a couple of hours on Sunday night for the 
conversion.  No big deal, thought I.

Ten minutes later, there's a promo running...."Kxxx is GOING OFF THE AIR!"

That ran long enough to get the phones blowing up with worried listeners.  A 
little later came the explanation that yes, Kxxx is going off the air...for 
some equipment installation.  The 9x caller after the station comes back on 
wins *something*.

Unfortunately for me, the T-1 gear wasn't ready by the time I had planned 
for the outage.  So I just went to the transmitter site, turned off the rig 
at midnight, did some maintenance, and turned it back on.  Sometime later I 
installed the T-1 without any further fanfare.

Allen Sherrill

> I *might* be the guy who originated that approach.
> It was about 1989 or so. There was deep concern in that station
> about losing audience while off the air, so I proposed that
> "contest".
> There were a LOT of calls, though I don't remember how many
> exactly. Hundreds at least.