An Engineer’s Nightmare—FCC Chairman Asked to Investigate Signal Outage

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published

No broadcast engineer wants their station to go off the air and when it does, they usually only have to explain to station management what happened. A story on AL.COM, FCC commissioner wants probe of WHNT must be an engineer’s worst nightmare.

According the article, an equipment failure at the Huntsville, Ala., station caused local viewers to miss a segment on “60 Minutes” concerning prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Siegelman was convicted of taking a $500,000 contribution from HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to the governor’s lottery campaign in exchange for a seat on a hospital regulatory board.

Addressing a media watchdog groups in Washington D.C., FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said the FCC needed to investigate the blackout and asked FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to look into it.

The article said the WHNT-TV originally reported the failure was with the feed from CBS, but later announced it was due to a problem at the transmitter site. The WHNT-TV general manager was quoted as saying the mishap was simply “the worst possible time for a piece of machinery to break down.” He said the station’s investigation showed it was nothing more than an equipment failure and he welcomed an inquiry by the FCC. The station repeated the missing segment twice and provided a link to the program on its Web site.

If you are interested in the politics behind the interest in this outage, read FCC commissioner wants probe of WHNT. The posted comments are also interesting!

Doug Lung
Doug Lung
Contributor

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack. A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.