The Little Birdie: "KDKA went off air"
Musings From Eric: "The Little Birdie" flew by PBRTV's World Headquarters this evening saying that KDKA-AM (1020) went off the air this morning around 11:20 for equipment purposes. The period off the air only lasted a minute or two, but apparently Noon-3 host Mike Pintek made a big deal of the outage on his program saying, "In all my years with KDKA I have never had to sign the station off," or words to that effect. The birdie flew away after that... Your comments are welcome.Readers’ Forum
It did indeed go off the air, as I listened to Mike Pintek announce it, and for several seconds, there was nothing but silence.
Actually, I heard the signal go in and out a few more times after it came back on the air, interrupting an interview Mike was conducting with a guest.
Pintek said they were having technical difficulties.
Troy - May 25, 2010 at 07:00 am
I speculate that there was more hammer swinging being done trying to beat In Band Over Channels into a different shape.The interference it generates on the host channel sounds different. Not BETTER, just different.
RJ Kanary - May 25, 2010 at 08:47 am
I do remember when I was a kid (I’ll be 44 in July), KDKA did go off the air, this was back in the 1970’s. IIRC, it was from a Saturday night to Sunday morning or Sunday night to Sunday morning deal where they would do transmitter maintenance. I often wonder how KDKA does maintenance now, do they have a backup transmitter they run to keep things going if the main one is being worked on and vice versa?
Charles D. Mandus - May 25, 2010 at 10:22 pm
I think KDKA has two matching Harris 50,000 watt transmitters. One transmitter is always available for use if the other one needs to be maintained. They also have the old Westinghouse transmitter. I do not know if that transmitter works though.
Ronald Rabatin - May 26, 2010 at 12:03 pm
If you take a peek at Scott Fybush’s NERW site and dig into the Tower Site Of the Week section you can see what’s still there inside the XMTR building.The two humdrum Harris XMTRs are there, keeping the ghost of the Circle Bar ‘W’ 50 HG company.
All the ‘big iron’ and associated power supply capacitors are long removed, ensuring that the mighty Westinghouse will never hurl flames into the ether again. Very sad from my POV. :(
RJ
RJ Kanary - May 27, 2010 at 07:13 am