Someone Donated $10 Million To KEXP

Rob Piotrowski said:

I have to admit that CF card should've been pulled out of service years ago.

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You're right. I will point out it may be difficult to replace that particular card at the local Staples. I've tried.

The first time our transmitter went down, it was the main transmission tube. We didn't have a replacement. Our CE called all over town to find a station that did have a back-up, then drove over to pick it up, and install it. We were off the air for almost a full day. So 90 minutes isn't bad.

I'm more making fun of the managers at KEXP (bet they get paid well) and if that includes the engineer then so be it. But to have 10 million in the bank and spend nothing to make you transmission facility robust is silly to me. Yes I know of million dollar broadcast company's that have lost air time. But they did have a backup transmitter and a transfer switch to put it on the air but still has off air time, stuff happens.

To ignore your transmission site while making a 10million+ dollar studio facility and then get 10 million on top of? All the money they spent on the studios and to not do anything to make the transmitter robust just does not make sense to this engineer.

And I do have CF flash cards in two new Nautel 50KW am rigs. The cards can fail on these boxes and stay on the air. I loose SNMP control if I'm using that but it stays on the air.

It wouldn't take more than $5k to make their transmitter site more robust and be able to put a backup transmitter on the air. I bet they go on air and beg for that money.

So I'll say it. Hey KEXP spend a little money on your transmitter site. You have the money in the bank and don't need to beg for it, like some non profit FM's that don't have people giving them 10 million dollars. There is no reason KEXP can't have a world class transmitter to go along with those fancy studios.

I guess it took a failure at the transmitter to point this out. At least they didn't have to spend 1 million on a study to find out they have vulnerabilities at the transmitter site.

It seems like the problem was probably more than a bad flash memory card. The claim was they went to their backup transmitter to get back up and running, so obviously they've spent money on backups. Why it took 90 minutes to switch over, would be the question in my mind.

Kelly A said:

.... Why it took 90 minutes to switch over, would be the question in my mind.

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Well, first, someone had to run over to the studio and tell them they were down. Everything being digital and all, latency in the program path probably prevents them from off-air listening. They just didn't know!

Then, an engineer had to brave Seattle's legendary traffic and re-point their STL from the main site to the aux. Digital being so reliable these days, why would you need two STL transmitters & antennas, etc? Anyone remember what direction the aux is?

We don't need a remote control at the aux. Digital being so bulletproof and expensive, it probably made sense to just move that stuff over to the main. So... someone's gotta go up and turn the thing on. Now, where are the keys??

ACK! Forgot there are TUBES in this old transmitter. Anyone remember how to warm up a set of mercury vapor rectifiers?

Whew! Got it going. Awful hot in here though. Forgot these things generate so much heat and, go figure, that Nutone bathroom fan on the side wall is locked up...

Sure... 90 minutes sounds about right.... at least that much!

Nahhhh.... couldn't have been that bad!

Grounded Grid said:

Well, first, someone had to run over to the studio and tell them they were down.

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I agree some one probably did need to go to the studio to tell them that flashing light was not telling them they were doing an Ultra Excellent job. Or that another 10 million donation had come in. It meant they were off the air.

I look at KEXP as that rich kid on the block ridding their fancy bike around all the poor neighbor hood non commercial FM stations. Then the chain breaks and with all the money they spent on that fancy bike, some basic engineering and maintenance, which they ignored was need to fix that fancy bike.

They spent more time figuring out how to take a photo of the now bad memory card than they did making sure they have a robust transmission system for their fancy studio's.

Wonder if they will do a fund raiser for a new/bigger bathroom fan. I see a $20 million dollar new transmitter site coming for KEXP.

How much do you think KUOW's endowment is? It's not like KEXP's money is coming from your taxes.

TheBigA said:

How much do you think KUOW's endowment is?

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$4,271,123

TheBigA said:

It's not like KEXP's money is coming from your taxes.

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KEXP's 2017 annual report says $634,570 came from the government.

At least TRY and look.

AQH said:

At least TRY and look.

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With you here, I don't have to.

DavidEduardo said:

The fact that the system did not automatically switch to the AUX likely indicates a failure in gear that does not and can not have redundancy, such as a combiner or switcher for the RF feed to the antenna. If they could not turn the AUX on by remote control, then someone had to go to the site and do the switch manually and fix the problem.

Most stations have an auxiliary transmitter at the site where the main is located, and they usually switch automatically if the main fails. Few stations have full second site auxiliary installations. Not knowing the inside scoop at KEXP I do not know whether they have two or more transmitters at the main site and/or an auxiliary site.

However, there are a few points where most FM stations can fail, no matter how redundant their installation is, such as the tower the antenna is on, coax fails due to arcing and lightening, antenna switching failures, catastrophic power supply failures (like a bad component in a transfer switch system) so there has to be an understanding of the system and the failure before negligence is blamed.

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Nahh... I was being sarcastic. I imagine the guy who has to deal with this isn't all that happy right now. Beyond that, whatever the reasons are for the transfer delay, its remotely possible that not even we experts have it completely right.

I've been there though... most engineers have. It's not fun.

What I don't get is how the station could be off the air for over 10 minutes without someone noticing at the station (if that is the case -- others here mentioned that the studio didn't know that the station was off the air).

I was at KCMU, KEXP's pre-cursor. There was an "on air monitoring" switch on the board.

I guess no DJ's or air staff monitor off the air anymore? Maybe the new digital 'boards' (if they still use boards?) don't have an 'on-air' monitoring switch?

boombox4 said:

What I don't get is how the station could be off the air for over 10 minutes without someone noticing at the station (if that iI guess no DJ's or air staff monitor off the air anymore? Maybe the new digital 'boards' (if they still use boards?) don't have an 'on-air' monitoring switch?

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If I were working in the game these days I'm not sure I would monitor off-the-air anymore!! The processing (thanks to PPM technology, etc.) has become so incredibly horrible I don't listen in the car … so not sure I would want to listen in the studio.

Thanks to PPM technology there is a PPM decoder box that monitors the PPM signal. KEXP encodes PPM so they must have one. Stations hook the Alarm output to an alarm on the remote control or a light at the studio to tell when PPM is failed. Most of time it means dead air or silence. Usually the PPM decoder is hooked to audio that is off air to ensure that the PPM signal is getting passed all the way through the transmission chain.

It's not uncommon for PPM alarms to activate when the transmitter fails and there is no audio at the receiver hooked to the PPM monitor. So in reality there should have been several alarms going off at KEXP.

However it's unclear at this point if the staff at KEXP may have interpreted the PPM alarm for the People Pledging Money alarm.

In the non commercial or the donation radio model it looks like the PPM alarm can have two meanings.
1- Your off the air and people are pledging Money so you get back on the air and stay there.
2- Your on the air with audio passing but the PPM Arbitron signal is not present. People are not pledging money.

I'm sure this extra step took time to digest and figure out which would help explain the long off air time and why it may have taken a while to figure out they had to go to the transmitter. And if people are pledging Money whats an extra hour of off air time, but more money.

xmtrland said:

And if people are pledging Money whats an extra hour of off air time, but more money.

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Sounds to me like you're jealous. The fact is this station has a committed group of fans who support the station because of what it is. That includes the corporate donors who made that $10 million pledge you keep bringing up. There is a core group of listeners who will support it even if it's off the air for 90 minutes. That's what people who work in non-com radio work for. This isn't a primary station that needs to provide emergency information. The comparison to commercial radio is every minute you're off the air is money that has to be refunded or made-good to advertisers.

How many other outages has the station had in its history? How about a little context?

TheBigA said:

Sounds to me like you're jealous. The fact is this station has a committed group of fans who support the station because of what it is. That includes the corporate donors who made that $10 million pledge you keep bringing up. There is a core group of listeners who will support it even if it's off the air for 90 minutes. That's what people who work in non-com radio work for. This isn't a primary station that needs to provide emergency information. The comparison to commercial radio is every minute you're off the air is money that has to be refunded or made-good to advertisers.

How many other outages has the station had in its history? How about a little context?

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Sounds to me you are misinformed about the $10 million, read the original post about the source.

TheBigA said:

How many other outages has the station had in its history? How about a little context?

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What does that matter? Non-com or not, the engineer's duty is to KEEP THE STATION ON THE AIR. If you can't do that then you should be replaced. That's the "context".

Rob Piotrowski said:

What does that matter? Non-com or not, the engineer's duty is to KEEP THE STATION ON THE AIR. If you can't do that then you should be replaced. That's the "context".

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I've worked for a lot of radio stations and have known a lot of chief engineers. None have ever faced that kind of ultimatum. Even at a commercial station where actual dollars are at stake. The way we assessed the value of our engineers was how quickly they returned the station to the air, and in that context, this one did a relatively good job. But hey, we live in a reality TV environment where everyone wants to vote other people off the island. The reality I know is that crap happens. When you run a radio station, chances are equipment will break. I had engineers say "If you don't use it, it won't break." But if it didn't break, we wouldn't need engineers. Maybe you or AQH can tell me if this engineer is an actual employee or a contractor. I suspect the latter.