How Hurricane Sandy Affected Broadcasters Hear No RF Evil - See No RF Evil

How Hurricane Sandy Affected Broadcasters

Posted: 27 Nov 2012 11:22 AM PST

Over the course of its path, Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc from the Caribbean, through the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, and all the way to the Northeast of the United States, causing a host of serious problems: power outages, floods, loss of homes and property, food shortages, billions in damages, and dozens and dozens of deaths.

But for many of the radio and TV stations in the Northeast and their audience, some of the worst casualties of the “superstorm” were the lost signals and broken transmitters that prevented them from broadcasting and kept people from accessing valuable news reports just when they needed them the most.

Radio tower fallen over due to high winds

What High Winds Do to Radio Towers!

WFMU in New Jersey reported that “the storm has taken our 91.1 FM transmitter off the air… We’re trying to get the transmitter back up as soon as we can, but [it] knocked out all electric at the transmitter site.” New York Public Radio WNYC-FM/AM had its AM transmitter site flooded, which completely killed the signal. And other TV and radio stations, like the Public Broadcast networks in West Virginia, experienced transmission issues due to the violence of the storm.

What Has Been Done Since to Repair the Damages?

By now, most of the signals are back up and running in some way, shape, or form. Most of the affected transmitters were fine once the storm had passed and the power could be turned back on. But unfortunately, that didn’t fix everything.

Truly damaged transmitters like the one that flooded for WNYC-AM are still out, and they are only able to continue operating on their FM frequency. The chief executive of New York Public Radio, Laura Walker, told The New York Timesthat the cost to repair WNYC’s AM transmitter would be around $300,000. At first glance, this would seem to be mostly taken care of by the $250,000 grant the Corporation for Public Broadcasting recently approved for the station, but unfortunately, WNYC estimates that just the costs of reporting on the storm were between $300,000 and $500,000, so they’ve got a long way to go.

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Thought About Avoiding Future Problems

The biggest way to keep problems like this from occurring in the future is to change the entire power infrastructure. Instead of using telephone poles and having wires snaking through the air which can be easily ripped down by strong winds, we should focus on moving all of our wiring underground where it will be far more protected from the elements and inclement weather, during a major hurricane or more minor incidents. And the areas housing transmitters should be upgraded so that they are waterproof allowing them to withstand rain better as well as flooding.

Of course, all of that costs time and money – lots and lots of money. There’s a much simpler solution that at least can serve as a buffer until it’s possible to really make the bigger changes. Even better, many TV and especially radio stations are already doing it. What is this solution? Online broadcasting.

When regular TV and radio stations were going down left and right, they turned to places like Twitter to keep their audiences updated on the situation. Why? Because while everything else faltered, the web had few significant issues.

In fact, many of those stations that lost power or had problems with their transmitters due to Hurricane Sandy actually did keep on broadcasting – through their websites. If everyone added web stream functionality to their broadcasts, they wouldn’t have to worry about being affected by inclement weather at all, and would be better able to serve their audience during times of trouble.

The proof of this was actually given to us, interestingly enough, by Hurricane Sandy itself. Those stations that either broadcast only online or decided to continue broadcasting over the internet when their “real” transmissions stopped saw huge increases in not just listeners, but also community involvement as more people called in, emailed, and posted comments.

Obviously, having a radio or TV station stream their broadcast online doesn’t solve every problem with the situation. Even if lots of people have laptops with long-lasting batteries, eventually they would need to recharge, and that’s not exactly easy when there are widespread power outages and electrical issues. Something bigger has to be done, especially since we seem to be getting more and bigger storms every year.

In the meantime, though, having an online broadcast available – if you can get it – certainly beats having no broadcast at all.

Since 1963, LBA has been providing RF equipment and engineering consulting services for radio and television broadcast and wireless communications.

About the author: Carl Petoskey is a respected freelance writer with years of experience covering poignant topics. When he's not writing, you can find him reviewing comcast business internet or reviewing other quality products and services.

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