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Another F--- Donald Trump hack?
- Thread starter bossbill
- Start date
I thought commercial Radio stations with an FCC license had to have control of the transmitter they use to broadcast with? Does KLSY have control of their transmitter? Why were they not able to shut it down the moment they knew what was going on? This just sounds like another irresponsible broadcaster. They just broadcast dead air for several hours after 10am with no ID until they got normal audio back. I guess we will see if they get away with it.
http://mediaexp.com/VIDEO0013.mp4
Warning this video clip may contain audio that some may find offensive.
http://mediaexp.com/VIDEO0013.mp4
Warning this video clip may contain audio that some may find offensive.
I thought commercial Radio stations with an FCC license had to have control of the transmitter they use to broadcast with? Does KLSY have control of their transmitter? Why were they not able to shut it down the moment they knew what was going on? This just sounds like another irresponsible broadcaster. They just broadcast dead air for several hours after 10am with no ID until they got normal audio back. I guess we will see if they get away with it.
http://mediaexp.com/VIDEO0013.mp4
Warning this video clip may contain audio that some may find offensive.
Maybe they weren't monitoring it off air at the time? I know sometimes at the college station I worked at jocks or staff wouldn't monitor off air, they'd monitor off the board.
And I don't know much about radio STL hacking, but my guess is not everyone at a radio station is an IT security expert. And I wonder if anyone will get caught for doing this to a commercial broadcaster. And if there is any law against it.
As far as I know 93.7 is a commercial broadcast frequency not in the Non Commercial band. Is Centro Familiar Cristiano operating the station as a non commercial station?
They new what was going on. Sloppy operation, they should be fined. Also the FCC sent out a memo about this two months ago.
Centro Familiar Cristiano is a sloppy operator, you want to operate a station you should know the rules. Demonstrating no control of your broadcast facility by ineffective monitoring and control of your broadcast signal and transmitter is not an excuse for forgiveness. It shows your operation is potentially illegal/not operating under the rules of your license. and could get you fined or shut down.
Letting this broadcast go on for over two hours shows no control of the broadcast signal. Simply shutting off the transmitter would have stopped the broadcast. To say it took 2 plus hours for the operator to notice this and still did not simply shut the transmitter down, demonstrates this operator has some serious monitor and control issues that are worthy of an FCC fine and needs to get into compliance. Its not the job of the FCC or public to educate a commercial broadcast license holder as to the rules of operation. Your supposed to know this stuff when you apply for a license or take control of a broadcast station. It's called responsibility.
You want to play the game, play by the rules every other commercial station has to play by or turn in the license.
They new what was going on. Sloppy operation, they should be fined. Also the FCC sent out a memo about this two months ago.
Centro Familiar Cristiano is a sloppy operator, you want to operate a station you should know the rules. Demonstrating no control of your broadcast facility by ineffective monitoring and control of your broadcast signal and transmitter is not an excuse for forgiveness. It shows your operation is potentially illegal/not operating under the rules of your license. and could get you fined or shut down.
Letting this broadcast go on for over two hours shows no control of the broadcast signal. Simply shutting off the transmitter would have stopped the broadcast. To say it took 2 plus hours for the operator to notice this and still did not simply shut the transmitter down, demonstrates this operator has some serious monitor and control issues that are worthy of an FCC fine and needs to get into compliance. Its not the job of the FCC or public to educate a commercial broadcast license holder as to the rules of operation. Your supposed to know this stuff when you apply for a license or take control of a broadcast station. It's called responsibility.
You want to play the game, play by the rules every other commercial station has to play by or turn in the license.
fordranger797
Star Participant
As far as I know 93.7 is a commercial broadcast frequency not in the Non Commercial band. Is Centro Familiar Cristiano operating the station as a non commercial station?
They new what was going on. Sloppy operation, they should be fined. Also the FCC sent out a memo about this two months ago.
Centro Familiar Cristiano is a sloppy operator, you want to operate a station you should know the rules. Demonstrating no control of your broadcast facility by ineffective monitoring and control of your broadcast signal and transmitter is not an excuse for forgiveness. It shows your operation is potentially illegal/not operating under the rules of your license. and could get you fined or shut down.
Letting this broadcast go on for over two hours shows no control of the broadcast signal. Simply shutting off the transmitter would have stopped the broadcast. To say it took 2 plus hours for the operator to notice this and still did not simply shut the transmitter down, demonstrates this operator has some serious monitor and control issues that are worthy of an FCC fine and needs to get into compliance. Its not the job of the FCC or public to educate a commercial broadcast license holder as to the rules of operation. Your supposed to know this stuff when you apply for a license or take control of a broadcast station. It's called responsibility.
You want to play the game, play by the rules every other commercial station has to play by or turn in the license.
I completely agree. Broadcasters can't ensure that everything goes smoothly 100% of the time, but this seems like a major oversight (much worse than the 101.9 hack, I might add). Not to mention, in this day and age the broadcaster could shut down their transmitter remotely to stop this from happening. It shows that nobody is paying attention to it.
This is right up there with the exploitation of SAGE EAS boxes and the zombie apocalypse messages a while back. Some small market broadcasters and LPFM's that buy Barix IP boxes, using them for a main or backup STL, then don't bother changing the default passwords. In my view, this is totally inexcusable. Any engineer, contract or employee, who connects any device to the public Internet without changing to strong passwords, should lose their job. Plain and simple.
Grounded Grid
Frequent Participant
They new what was going on. Sloppy operation, they should be fined. Also the FCC sent out a memo about this two months ago.
Centro Familiar Cristiano is a sloppy operator, you want to operate a station you should know the rules. Demonstrating no control of your broadcast facility by ineffective monitoring and control of your broadcast signal and transmitter is not an excuse for forgiveness. It shows your operation is potentially illegal/not operating under the rules of your license. and could get you fined or shut down.
Letting this broadcast go on for over two hours shows no control of the broadcast signal. You want to play the game, play by the rules every other commercial station has to play by or turn in the license.
KLSY is commercial, operated by a church... not the first example of that sort of organization.
I can't defend CFC for not controlling the situation or the level of diligence they practice as regards the FCC. However, I might remind some of the critics here about a certain fire at Fisher Plaza, some years back. Until that was resolved, KVI sat on Vashon with unmodulated carrier. In that case, the silence lasted MUCH, MUCH longer than the down-time at KLSY. Seems someone could (should) have driven over to the transmitter and turned it off manually. KPLZ was also silent for some time, until they worked up feeds to their TV and KOMO transmitters and got a CD player hooked up to the KPLZ STL. Don't even know how they managed their Spanish operations.
Was anyone demanding the heads of the Fisher folks over those errors? Don't recall seeing any such comments.
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Rob Piotrowski
Star Participant
Was anyone demanding the heads of the Fisher folks over those errors? Don't recall seeing any such comments.
Paging Kelly A...was that when you were there or was that your successor's matter?
Grounded Grid
Frequent Participant
I understand you didn't aim that at me, Rob... sorry to butt in, but that wasn't my point. I'd be the last to shoot arrows toward Fisher. They had a very bad situation that day, and if you were watching how they reacted, it seems to me they did a good job of getting something back on the air as fast as they did. Given the state of the art over there, having a blown buss bar and a water-soaked generator was probably the last thing they could imagine happening. My point was that, in the heat of the moment, turning off one silent carrier... maybe the least productive of their group, could have been the last thing on their minds. If I'm not mistaken, we still had an enforcement office in Seattle at the time. They didn't seem concerned about it, so maybe it shouldn't be seen as such a grievous violation.
Should CFC have noticed & shut down the offending audio sooner? Probably. I imagine there may have been some lessons learned over there last Sunday. Should they close up shop and turn in their license? That's seems a bit extreme. Is it likely the FCC will fly up from Portland and get to the bottom of this? Doubtful.
Given enough time and access, I'd bet you'd find most of the broadcasters around here have had a few problems in their closets. Nobody's perfect.
Should CFC have noticed & shut down the offending audio sooner? Probably. I imagine there may have been some lessons learned over there last Sunday. Should they close up shop and turn in their license? That's seems a bit extreme. Is it likely the FCC will fly up from Portland and get to the bottom of this? Doubtful.
Given enough time and access, I'd bet you'd find most of the broadcasters around here have had a few problems in their closets. Nobody's perfect.
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Paging Kelly A...was that when you were there or was that your successor's matter?
As head Corporate Technical Puke back in the Fisher days, I made the call to pass on HD Radio. I recommended that Fisher wait until other early-adopting groups like Clear Channel, Entercom, CBS, Emmis and alike, proved whether there was an ROI. There was no advantage to being one of the early adopters.
I also made the case that it would be in the company's interest to use those capital dollars toward improving the other smaller market TV stations in the group, especially in light of the DTV-transition.
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KLSY is commercial, operated by a church... not the first example of that sort of organization.
However, I might remind some of the critics here about a certain fire at Fisher Plaza, some years back. Until that was resolved, KVI sat on Vashon with unmodulated carrier. In that case, the silence lasted MUCH, MUCH longer than the down-time at KLSY. Seems someone could (should) have driven over to the transmitter and turned it off manually. KPLZ was also silent for some time, until they worked up feeds to their TV and KOMO transmitters and got a CD player hooked up to the KPLZ STL. Don't even know how they managed their Spanish operations.
Was anyone demanding the heads of the Fisher folks over those errors? Don't recall seeing any such comments.
Regarding your comparison with the electrical meltdown at Fisher Plaza: There were people who lost their jobs after the smoke cleared (pardon the pun), but that's not the same thing as my comment. The loss of use (and AC power) at the studios while they were scrambling to get the stations back up constituted an emergency, which the Commission would recognize. Being a total dumb a**, and connecting any studio or transmitter device to the public Internet with default passwords, which could be hijacked and used to program obscene content, zombie apocalypse, whatever, is in my thinking, unforgivable.
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Grounded Grid
Frequent Participant
Being a total dumb a**, and connecting any studio or transmitter device to the public Internet with default passwords, which could be hijacked and used to program obscene content, zombie apocalypse, whatever, is in my thinking, unforgivable.
Well it could be that, Kelly, but I no longer know exactly how they have their STL configured I don't know if they left a default password in whatever internet box they may have, but I do know who set it up and I doubt he'd do that.
That said, a few years ago, I had a Barix box get hacked. They got past what I thought was a pretty decent password, put their own in and repointed the box to a stream coming out of China. The content was not offensive, but seemed to show that someone got through the security because they could. More recently, a local engineer told me about a web site that listed the IP addresses of a large number of Barix-type boxes. Some of those had no passwords in them at all. A few, including some of mine, were listed only because the web interface was connected to a static IP. I reprogrammed those behind ports so they're no longer as visible, though I wonder how much more secure that might be...
It might surprise you, though maybe not, the number of area broadcasters that use the public internet for everything from remotes to syndicated content to STLs. I have 3 syndicators in my travels that used to use satellite and have now gone to Barix boxes.
Scary.
Hopefully a BIG wake up call for CFC to get there act together. Do they have control of the transmitters in their other markets do they have EAS? CFC should be doing a top to bottom evaluation of all their broadcast properties after this issue.
In the hacking investigation of KLSY, wouldn't the FBI be the ones looking into this with the FCC? I would think they would want some basic answers as to why? Were they so careless to leave the STL open to hacking by not changing a password? Even after the FCC sent out a warning to change the default password to protect your IP STL? This could have been an inside job, some one with knowledge of the operation?
Things to ponder:
What really happened?
What corrective action have they taken to ensure this does not happen again?
Will they get fined by the FCC?
Do they have a remote control and if so do they know how to use it?
Does anyone at CFC lose their job or contract?
In the hacking investigation of KLSY, wouldn't the FBI be the ones looking into this with the FCC? I would think they would want some basic answers as to why? Were they so careless to leave the STL open to hacking by not changing a password? Even after the FCC sent out a warning to change the default password to protect your IP STL? This could have been an inside job, some one with knowledge of the operation?
Things to ponder:
What really happened?
What corrective action have they taken to ensure this does not happen again?
Will they get fined by the FCC?
Do they have a remote control and if so do they know how to use it?
Does anyone at CFC lose their job or contract?
- Status
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