Interesting. Considering that the radio station was available on-line, that would indicate that the studios were functioning. So, we're talking about routing between the studios and multiple transmitter locations. Seems to me like it wouldn't be that expensive to have backup equipment in place that would allow Internet connection between the studios and the transmitters. The quality for the AMs wouldn't be much different. The quality for the FMs would suffer, but morning drive doesn't play a lot of music anyway. I'd guess that an hour of AM drive revenue would pay for the necessary equipment for at least their big 3 stations. Sounds to me like somebody is being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
I'm guessing that the SAS router that has been a problem for years and played a small part in my leaving Entercom years ago was the point of failure. That audio router has been plagued with issues for years, including one time when it went randomly bats**t and routed WGR audio to all seven stations during drive time when Mike Schopp was telling a p*nis joke (or some such, I can't remember the details any longer). If the audio is wired the same way it was 6 years ago, then the streams don't go through that router, the audio is pulled directly from the studio in front of the EAS box.
That router bit me in the ass one time when work was being done to the Kiss transmitter and the route failed. About every tenth time you tried to change the route of the audio on that channel, it would fail. I did not know this at the time, and being somewhat OCD, I set it, tested it, then set it again for good measure. When the backup audio failed to come up, I was blamed for it and accused of sabotage because certain people at Entercom had issues with me personally. No need to sabotage anything when the company does things like lets roofs leak onto transmitters and into equipment racks for years, lets tower bases rot for a decade after the tower company tells them they are falling apart and dangerous, lets 250 kW generators run on 4 cylinders when they were warned about it months in advance but refused to fix, and lets the studio air conditioning fail and insists on three quotes before they will fix it when they were warned they had no backup and failure of the secondary would result in a disaster (all these things happened).
Radio was fun for years but now this is what it has come to.
I'm glad I'm out. And no I don't care if anyone from Entercom reads this. I know they will and I know they know who I am. There are lots of good people still there but Buffalo radio would be much better off if certain managers had chosen driving a bus as a career rather than trying to run a radio station. I don't think there's much of a difference in the skill level required to do either job, if history is any indication. Every time I hear one of these stories or read complaints about how bad the stations sound now, I just laugh, because everything went to hell after I left. Too bad bigotry and stupidity circumvented any appreciation for how much care, time, effort and overtime I put into taking care of that aging equipment for years. I got the last laugh.
