No backup transmitter sites

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

Various bits of news I have seen add up to say that only WCBS-TV, ch. 2,
had a backup transmitter (Empire State, old main transmitter location for
all of them) and was able to stay on the old-fashioned over-the-air air
after the second WTC tower collapsed with the master antenna on it. The
other stations were not, are not, and won't be "on the air" at least for a
few more days and at least some of them are only talking about having
reduced power even then. That means that right now they are not available
to the estimated 30 percent of the metro audience that does not have cable.
That last statistic is from Wednesday's NY Times.

<rant mode ON>
<most sarcastic possible sarcasm mode on>

Shame on the wretched bean counters at WCBS who must have failed to
discover this foolish added expense, so the station accidentally still had
its backup, when it could have saved the equivalent of 20 cents a year.
This bizarre mummified leftover from the ancient era of the tiffany network
escaped destruction. I'm sure now that it's been outed by this incident, it
will be dismantled within a few weeks.

<sarcasm off>

TV is what radio used to be for instant news in a disaster. Although a
colleague of mine joked at this news, saying the non-cable audience is
demographically undesirable (ha, ha, ha), so who cares, I'm just a
neanderthal who thinks that stations like this, in major markets, making
gazillions of dollars profit per day, squared, that are too
XXXX$$$$$###@@@##### cheap or too $$#%%%$##@%%%%% stupid to have a backup
site should be ineligible to hold a license. And the same goes for other
major markets, like Boston. Once upon a time, there was an FCC and
something about public interest, convenience and necessity.

<rant mode off>