Hurricane Florence

[appleachian 128]

That depends. Those towers are built to withstand storms. I’m sure they have engineers routinely checking on it and making sure it’s still secure with all the guy wires in place and seeing if anything moving abnormally.

I was being facetious.

 

My point is that they don’t need a plan any more than CTI thought they needed one.

[Rusty Muck 4167]

To be fair, WCTI has been there since the 60s and has never flooded before. This is a historic game changing flood event for New Bern.

 

I agree that the meteorologists should have left with everyone else, but they didn’t have a plan because they didn’t expect to need one. This isn’t a KHOU situation where it’s happened several times before.

 

Yes, it was a one-in-a-lifetime flood. But still. You should be leaving with everyone else, especially when the station building is being compromised in multiple ways. It puts your life is in imminent danger either due to the risk of electrocution, drowning, or whatever. There is no reason to stay.

 

For all the times legendary Dick Goddard said "turn around, don't drown," he famously nearly drowned in a freak rainstorm that caused his car to be submerged. And that was a May thunderstorm in the midwest, not a Cat 1 hurricane.

 

In this day and age, with cloud data storage and redundant backups on top of redundant backups AND ESPECIALLY since they are owned by the largest TV broadcast chain by volume in the US... they could easily have reassembled WCTI's met team at a secure location wherever and not miss a beat.

[appleachian 128]

I agree that the mets should have left with everyone else.

 

I’m a bit dumbfounded that they have not found a way back on air. They have two channels - WCTI 12 and WYDO 14 - and last time I checked neither were even broadcasting a signal. Maybe their generator at the tx failed. Both come from the same site.

 

Beyond that, it seems like Sinclair could have done better than simulcasting news from Myrtle Beach. WPDE did not talk about ENC much at all. I expected to see WCYB’s meteorologists doing weather for our area and getting sent out WCTI’s tx.

[Eat News 4738]

Sometime during events like this engineers will shut down a transmitter on purpose...to prevent more damage to the gear.

They will wait out the storm.

 

Stations are under no obligation to stay on the air if it means damage to equipment or risk of employees lives.

 

You do your best to serve as you can.

 

TV stations should always have plans to simulcast or even camp out at as many local radio stations as possible. Your viewers will be on the radio....for weeks after also.

Formal or informal arrangements are fi9ne, but you NEED to be on the radio more than on TV since only about .2% of your viewers will even be able to see you since most don't use antennas or have generators for true OTA.

[PelicanGuy 117]

Too bad about WCTI/WYDO. Hope the damage isn't too bad.

 

With that said, I haven't watched a lick of network coverage on Florence. I've been checking out a bunch of local stations online and via DirecTV. Most of the local stations in the affected area are doing a pretty good job with their coverage, IMO. So far, my favorites have been WWAY, WTVD and WNCT.

[TheMassMediaGeek 98]

Florence is now here in Raleigh, I’m safe and haven’t lost power yet, but I think Florence is worse than Matthew back in 2016.

[AaronQ 259]

WBTV is gonna carry the hour long CBS Evening News followed by a 30 minute special on Florence because of it. WSOC is having a hour long special on Florence after World News Tonight.

[news89 467]

With my temporary work schedule change I can watch coverage of Flo. Watching this live stream feed from wowktv.com from sisters stations WNCT, WBTW and WNCN. Was able to capture this screenshot of all 3 feeds complete with all L3's on at the same time. Right now WBTW is in replay mode.

[Rusty Muck 4167]

TV stations should always have plans to simulcast or even camp out at as many local radio stations as possible. Your viewers will be on the radio....for weeks after also.

Formal or informal arrangements are fi9ne, but you NEED to be on the radio more than on TV since only about .2% of your viewers will even be able to see you since most don't use antennas or have generators for true OTA.

WNCT just did that, their audio is now being simulcast on every station in the Inner Banks Media chain.

 

 

[appleachian 128]

WECT in Wilmington is being partially evacuated due to part of the roof being ripped off the building.

[Jess 1110]

Who's streaming and more importantly, who's worth watching? This is such a wide-ranging event that it's hard to determine who to watch. Cable news is worthless, obviously, and I don't have The Weather Channel(not that it's any good anyway)...

[appleachian 128]

Who's streaming and more importantly, who's worth watching? This is such a wide-ranging event that it's hard to determine who to watch. Cable news is worthless, obviously, and I don't have The Weather Channel(not that it's any good anyway)...

WRAL has reporters everywhere

WITN is doing a good job in ENC

WECT has been pretty good too, streamed them some

[AaronQ 259]

WSOC is gonna have rolling coverage of Florence starting at noon tomorrow until midnight with college football being moved to their sister station WAXN.

 

Edit: I fail to mention that WSOC is also doing rolling coverage tomorrow morning starting at 5am-10am prior the rolling coverage at noon.

[Ntropolis 593]

WECT is doing a great job with social media. They’ve created a “Community Voice” Facebook group for people to post photos and information and have been relaying it on-air.

[rkolsen 1678]

Craig Melvin’s team had quite a setup. I assume they were in someone’s covered deck complete with teleprompter and return vision. He was probably far away from which the prompter and return video would be useful but still impressive. I assume it may be equipment they want to get replaced but write it off for insurance reasons as a loss.

 

[MEDIA=instagram]BntEiMzji1O[/MEDIA]

 

There also was Nightly News coming from a dock, where a prompter would probably be useless:

 

[MEDIA=twitter]1040391241215737858[/MEDIA]

[GoldenShine9 1509]

WECT in Wilmington is being partially evacuated due to part of the roof being ripped off the building.

 

They have several options on where to relocate at least: WMBF (if not flooded), WCSC, WIS and WBTV are all in range, depending on weather conditions. I figured flooding would have been a bigger issue for WECT, since they are close to the river.

 

I think WCTI wasn't entirely set up yet, since Sinclair had only owned them for less than a year and they may not have had all the control connections in place yet, and Bonten probably had no plan for them with other stations (not unlike WWAY, but at least they don't have to worry about flooding).

[mrschimpf 2059]

Edit: I fail to mention that WSOC is also doing rolling coverage tomorrow morning starting at 5am-10am prior the rolling coverage at noon.

 

And I suppose that two hours is to get the damned required E/I programming in. Why none of these stations just don't claim 'news product telling kids flooding is bad, how to act in a severe weather situation and they'll learn more than animals are fluffy' on the quarterly KidVid form and tell the FCC to accept it or shove it at this point, is confusing; it's educating people and kids get more learning value out of it than yet another nature show.

 

Northpine has also posted two pages of live feed embeds onto a page on their site to help news junkies.

[GoldenShine9 1509]

One thing I wonder: did any Gray stations send resources to Raycom stations? There's only one Gray news operation affected (WITN) but at least five Raycom news operations (WECT, WIS, WCSC, WMBF and WBTV), so there's extra resources available there.

[tyrannical bastard 3464]

I figured something had happened at WECT while watching their coverage this morning. In the shout box, I mentioned the fallen trees around the station and the creaking and loud thud heard inside their studio. They claimed it could have been a rooftop AC unit being blown off their roof.

 

Regarding WCTI, despite their longtime location never flooding until now, it was only a matter of time before it did.

 

Sinclair would be smart to move them to higher ground, hopefully keeping them close to New Bern to give that side of the market the coverage it needs.

 

I don't know if safety played a role in WITN's decision to move from their longtime studios in Chocowinity (near Washington)... probably the desire to be in Greenville and closer to the action and upgrade the station to current technology...

[TheRolyPoly 1847]

If you check out the WFTV app for Roku (and more likely at WFTV.com too), you'll see WFTV simulcasting coverage from WSOC-TV Charlotte in a second feed.

[AaronQ 259]

If you check out the WFTV app for Roku (and more likely at WFTV.com too), you'll see WFTV simulcasting coverage from WSOC-TV Charlotte in a second feed.

WHBQ is also streaming a simulcast of WSOC's coverage as well. https://www.fox13memphis.com/live-breaking

[Rusty Muck 4167]

And I suppose that two hours is to get the damned required E/I programming in. Why none of these stations just don't claim 'news product telling kids flooding is bad, how to act in a severe weather situation and they'll learn more than animals are fluffy' on the quarterly KidVid form and tell the FCC to accept it or shove it at this point, is confusing; it's educating people and kids get more learning value out of it than yet another nature show.

 

Northpine has also posted two pages of live feed embeds onto a page on their site to help news junkies.

At least the two hour break will give the air talent, reporters, producers and engineers some time to breathe and regroup.

 

I'm pretty sure that if anything urgent happens, they'll break in to whatever Litton show is running and reschedule it for sometime tomorrow.

[rfnc07 0]

Right now as of 10:09am, WSOC and WCNC are still live, having been live since 5am. WBTV and WJZY ran in their usual Saturday morning patterns from what I could tell (albeit with their weekday morning anchors.)

 

Based on my Spectrum guide, WSOC was already scheduled to go wall to wall from noon to midnight.

 

Spectrum News’ coverage has been pretty impressive, providing live weather hits through the night last night.

[johnnya2k6 171]

Atlanta’s contributing to Florence; Doug Evans with the Fox 5 (WAGA) Storm Chaser cruised down a deserted Myrtle Beach, SC while WSB’s Brian Monahan is also in South Carolina. Both, as well as WXIA and WGCL, deployed a few of their reporters to the Carolinas.

Jeff Hill subbed for David Chandley Friday, though I wish WAGA could’ve gotten Ken Cook out of retirement for one day only.

[FmrENCNewser 21]

Looks like Sinclair finally got WCTI back on the air. Just the main channel, no subs. And not WYDO yet. Looks like they’re broadcasting live from downtown New Bern from a truck.