Re: radio and the plane crash

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

        I noticed a couple things about WBZ radio covering the plane crash
on Sunday. It went very heavily with network coverage from ABC, hardly
using CBS at all, all day long. In the morning, it was using 10-20 minute
chunks of ABC radio net and sometimes ABC TV net audio, then putting in its
own segments. So there was still no sign at all of a tilt to using CBS. And
it was wall-to-wall plane crash, with just weather and traffic, and even
those were getting bumped in the early hours. There were no other news
items all day and virtually no ads until a few started popping up in the
afternoon. (I went with it until about 5 p.m.) They did a good job of
bringing the weather forecaster into the crash story--asking him about the
current and forecast weather out at sea, etc.
        And for all the comments I've seen here in the past about WBZ
having on-air glitches, the production was very good, given the
circumstances. They had a couple remote reports that did not come in on
cue, but that may have been cell phone trouble. In fact, the audio glitches
I heard nearly all sounded like they probably were cell phone drop-outs,
disconnects and such.
        The other thing was that WBZ switched down to 10 kW for the daytime
tower work, around 8 a.m., as usual. (They're working seven days a week.) I
had wondered for a minute if they might even cancel the work for the day
because of the big story. I was in the Boston area for the first time since
they've been working on the towers, so I got to hear the backup signal up
close. No wonder they're working seven days a week <g>. In addition to the
reduced coverage area, the audio quality sounds inferior--sort of distorted
sometimes. Overmodulation, maybe? In Scituate, the 10 kW signal is not
really as strong as the daytime signals of 950, 1090, 1260. I was a little
surprised.