Hurricane Ida

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

At this point in time, it looks to making landfall in the New Orleans area (the southern coast) as a category 4 storm.  It may also affect Baton Rouge as a category 1 hurricane.

The New Orleans stations (with the exception of WGNO) are wall-to-wall with storm coverage.  Baton Rouge is cutting in sporadically.

To the east in Biloxi/Gulfport and Mobile/Pensacola, they're also doing hourly updates on all stations, even on both of WXXV's main feeds!

 

[MorningNews 1528]

What an impressive turn around the last 10 years have been for Fox 8 WVUE. Their coverage is phenomenal.

[ScottSchell 371]

41 minutes ago, MorningNews said:

What an impressive turn around the last 10 years have been for Fox 8 WVUE. Their coverage is phenomenal.

I was watching them last night till midnight when it went to a replay of 10pm.

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

WVUE's upward momentum started right after Katrina, despite it flooding their studios and having to basically re-build from the inside out.  The eventual sale from Emmis to Tom Benson's group really made them a factor, along with the decline of WWL under Belo, Gannett and later Tegna.  WWL losing their morning show to CBS's demands is likely the final factor that pushed WVUE to the top.  

 

Bottom line, WVUE has the ability to compete and not be bogged down by network programming during certain dayparts. Plus, WVUE is more like the old WWL in a lot of ways, while WWL itself is subject to corporate and network mandates, and this has really hurt them over the last several years.

 

Meanwhile at WGNO......still in the basement without any hope of rising from it.

[memnews 36]

WLBT in Jackson, MS, was even running WVUE's coverage in primetime instead of the NASCAR race.

[TheRob 940]

WGNO

 

 

[TheRob 940]

Also WGNO

 

 

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

I figured that something was up with WGNO.  On YouTube TV, their channel was being substituted with  "ABC News Live" and is now in ABC network programming.  They're probably only able to run out of their hubbed location if their facilities in Metairie (Jefferson Parish) have been compromised.  It may also be the ABC feed that YouTubeTV feeds to markets without an ABC affiliate for the time being.

 

The others, who are based in New Orleans are still on the air.  I know WWL has a backup studio ready to go and running in Baton Rouge (LPB?).  And The Weather Channel is reporting that ALL of Orleans Parish (New Orleans) does not have power. So all of the stations there have to be running on some kind of generator or backup power.

[MorningNews 1528]

Watching WGNO coverage online and they’re alluding to power in their studio being gone. It’s apparently very hot inside the studio too so they’ve got fans cranked up.

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

Over in Biloxi, WLOX and WXXV are both on the air, however only on one of their streams per channel. 

WLOX is pre-empting ABC on .1 and showing CBS programming on .2, while WXXV is pre-empting FOX on .1 and  showing SNF on NBC .2.

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

17 minutes ago, MorningNews said:

Watching WGNO coverage online and they’re alluding to power in their studio being gone. It’s apparently very hot inside the studio too so they’ve got fans cranked up.

Chief Meteorologist Hank Allen just said that the roof is leaking over where the News With A Twist performance area used to be.  You can also hear the fans running in the studio.

 

Props to them soldiering on despite the very trying, and likely MISERABLE conditions in the studio right now.

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

More conditions inside the WGNO station....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheRob 940]

WGNO newsroom

 

 

[Daybreak 292]

Tamica Lee just went live and to say that she’s stressed is an understatement. It’s really a scary and nerve racking situation they are in now. 
 

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTLiDaxikcp/?utm_medium=copy_link

[DENDude 223]

WDSU is Reporting that WGNO and WVUE have been affected by some power transmission issues at there transmitter sites. 

 

I feel bad for the folks over at WGNO, hopefully they can stay on the air throughout this storm...

 

 

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

It would not surprise me for them to defer to Baton Rouge (WVLA), Lafayette (KLFY), Jackson (WJTV), or even Mobile (WKRG) at this point.  They need some relief and safety despite giving their all to put out local coverage.

Is WGNO/WNOL's master control hubbed to another city or is it local?

[AaronQ 288]

WWL-TV switched over to the Louisiana Public Broadcasting studios in Baton Rouge for the time being.

 

Edit: WWL-TV studios got some power back thanks to backup generators.

[MorningNews 1528]

2 hours ago, Daybreak said:

Tamica Lee just went live and to say that she’s stressed is an understatement. It’s really a scary and nerve racking situation they are in now. 
 

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTLiDaxikcp/?utm_medium=copy_link

Sorry to be that person but she really should not have gone live. Public freak outs are not comforting for viewers.

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

WVUE just took a power hit in their studios.  The cameras, microphones and graphics are still working, but the studio lights are out and they showed a dark shot of the studio with the monitors and accent lights still working.  Likely tied to different generators of varying priority.

[Georgie56 3333]

Watching WGNO, you could hear the storm in the background in the studio. 

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

It's almost deja-vu for them this time around. 

Before Katrina, they had literally just moved into the New Orleans Centre from the World Trade Center tower. 

Then Katrina hit. 

They were essentially evicted from there as the owners shut down the center and they were forced BACK into their World Trade Center facility when it was finally accessible.  They stayed there until their move to the Galleria in 2007.

 

Perhaps it's time for Nexstar to seriously consider moving the station to a safer location, in something more non-descript and built to handle storms like these.   That's a major challenge in the New Orleans area, since much of the area is below sea level and can be easily flooded if the levee system fails. 

 

In the meantime, as the recovery process begins, hopefully Nexstar (and all of the other owners) can pick up the slack with their other markets so the affected stations can regroup, and that the employees can deal with their effects, because from the looks of things, there is a lot of damage in the area and it could be weeks before power is even restored.  While Katrina was a flooding event for the area (due to levee failures), this storm produced more actual damage from the wind in the area, and could be compared to something as bad as Betsy.

[MorningNews 1528]

Looks like WVUE just lost signal at 11:45 pm.

[nathannah 2520]

I have no winners or losers in this coverage, at least locally.

 

The Weather Channel and news channels need to figure out there's more than the French Quarter to the New Orleans area already and watching WWL's mobile unit drive past minor damage and scoff as the nationals did their 'look damage and lots of wind see?!' shot early on was pretty much one of the small funny moments in this all. And News Nation on tape after 10? Perry should be sacking folks in the morning. And unfortunately, WGNO's Galleria studio came during the Zell era, so instead of getting a weather-hearty studio like any station should have got, they got one that looks nice in sunny weather; horrid when everything goes south.

 

All the stations prepared for a Katrina redux, and unfortunately it seems to be happening anew for all of them, but they've all stepped up and done what they can to cover it so far; though I think things will be much worse tomorrow, and god forbid there's issues with the pumps and levees. It looks like we just lost the website feed for WVUE as I speak, so hopefully they'll get back up again (the Vuit link broke earlier).

[tyrannical bastard 4055]

Just now, mrschimpf said:

And News Nation on tape after 10? Perry should be sacking folks in the morning.

I saw them "live" earlier this evening, and it was a DAYTIME look-live as New Orleans was being pounded by rain....AT NIGHT.

 

I really hope Nexstar has a good plan of using their resources to help out WGNO cover the area.  If the transmitter is down, that's one thing, but they can at least send people from other stations to cover the area for the benefit of any evacuees in their other markets.  Gray & Hearst are probably the next best equipped with all of their surrounding markets, and Tegna may need to put Beaumont, Houston, Dallas and Memphis on notice to help out WWL.

[appleachian 135]

WVUE lost their generator power and once the batteries went, that was it.  There are anchors stationed at WBRC/Birmingham doing coverage for WVUE right now. 
 

I went between WVUE (most of my viewing) and WWL (here and there) today.  I remember watching WWL during Katrina and how awesome they were.  My goodness Tegna has destroyed that station.  The product I saw looked like it belongs at least 25 markets down.  I was very impressed by WVUE’s reporting team, seemed a lot more mature than WWL.