Comments on: Comments on the Don Siegelman 60 Minutes report

By: Flashpoint » Blog Archive » A quick primer on the Don Siegelman fantasy

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:43:52 +0000

[...] Comments on the Don Siegelman 60 Minutes report [...]

By: Flashpoint » Blog Archive » Red Alert!

Flashpoint » Blog Archive » Red Alert! — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:06:28 +0000

[...] haven’t dedicated a full post to the “blackout,” but you can read my thoughts in this comment thread if you are so inclined. Here’s the [...]

By: Flashpoint » Blog Archive » Debating a constitutional convention in Alabama

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:30:48 +0000

[...] can read the Times’ article about the debate here. WHNT was also covering the event (no technical glitches that I could tell). They interviewed me and included a few seconds of my response. If [...]

By: Dale Jackson

Dale Jackson — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:36:48 +0000

What does that mean? They answered, you just don’t like it.

You are now worrying about their off-air pricedures?

Do you think this was a tactical move jack?

By: jack

jack — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:10:07 +0000

I’m not looking for conspiracy, I’m just looking for answers.

This is a fantastic coincidence, and I’d just like to know why it happened. Despite requesting answers from the News director and news producer, I still haven’t heard a satisfactory explanation.

I’d really like to know why no one at the station switched to the backup feed immediately when this happened. Apparently there was a crawl across the bottom of the screen, so whoever punched that in could easily have punched up one of the backup recievers.

By: Dale Jackson

Dale Jackson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:10:42 +0000

So when you can’t find conspiracy you find incompetence and call it conspiracy? The engineer was not on site.

By: jack

jack — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:18:41 +0000

Actually, my last comment about switching the feed from master control is answered in the explanation from WHNT. But why wasn’t it done immediately? Why did they have to wait the 12 minutes for the Chief engineer to make his way to op control, when it was clearly staffed?

By: jack

jack — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:18:00 +0000

Here’s a comment from a TV station manager to the News Directors blog at WHNT:

“What happened to the backup??? Anyone who knows anything at all about running a station knows that redundancy is tantamount to staying on the air and collecting revenue. If your master control was running an active backup, whether sattelite, tape or both, the quickest path to signal restoration would be to switch to the backup. If my master control operators failed to run a backup, they would find themselves in the unemployment line pronto.

As far as to why an engineer would have to go to the transmitter site to restore a satellite feed to the studio, well, I’m scratching my head over that one. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

This level of incompetence is almost ridiculous- the amount of time it took to reboot the 2 of 4 failed recievers. Where were the master control operators? Why was’nt the feed switched to the backup recievers from master control? Come on.

As for the conspiracy, this blackout seems to have created more outrage than the story itself, so where does that leave us?

By: Dale Jackson

Dale Jackson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:16:14 +0000

No, that is not what it says. It says there was a failure. Sometimes the recievers lock up. It happened at WVNN during election coverage. Ask anyone that works in radio and television. THAT HAPPENS.

Seriously people, if this was a conspiracy it was a pretty stupid one.

By: jack

jack — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:39:14 +0000

So far, looks like there was no “failure”. Someone switched the channel on the local IRD(integrated reciever decoder). How the hell does that happen by accident?