Gather round Conspiracy Theorists!

[Norquist Nemesis]

Two or three weeks ago, I'm riding around town doing errands and listening to our (ONLY) progressive talk radio station (Chicago 850 AM). After a couple of commercials, there is a full five to seven minutes of Dead Air.

"Huh?", I think and keep waiting. Then, as if nothing has happened, the host comes back on the air. I chuckle as I think about their commercial dealing with the NSA taking them off the air and go along my merry way finishing up errands.

A few days later, Ed Schultz has returned from a trip to Chicago. He also apparently made a stop in Cincinnati and he's on a rip about good program management and *drum roll* Dead Air. It sounded like he has been taken to task by the Cincinnati people about his ratings; the same old song and dance about not being able to sell progressive radio. He also infers he had gotten something similar from the Chicago group (Jones). "Huh!"

Schultz goes on for quite a while about how it's about good management. That you can have the best person in the world on the air, but that's not going to make the station money...if THEY'RE NOT ON THE AIR! Dead Air, people move on! "Huh!"

The next day, I'm again in the car listening and...VOILA! Dead Air! "WTF???"

So, this morning after watching CSPAN, I turn off the tube and decide to stream Jay Marvin at least until Thom Hartmann comes on at 11. Guess what! DEAD AIR! Yes, from 9:02 until 9:23 there has been Dead Air. At 9:23, programming resumed with one commercial...then back to DEAD AIR.

The Boulder station is a Clear Channel station and I don't know who owns the Cincinnati station Schultz is on. It probably has nothing to do with this Dead Air phenomenon I keep experiencing. But I have to hand it to hand it to those higher up muckety mucks who have such a keen sense of quality in the staff and management they hire! :thumbsup:

Still... :wtf: :tinfoilhat:

Ah hah!! 9:33 and we're back to On Air!!! Finally!!!

[goclark]

1. Very interesting nt

[mod mom]

2. I have incurred this frequently on the AAR station in Cols OH, but no

explanation. This station also broadcasts Reds baseball and Cavaalier basketball and I wonder if there are interruptions during games (probably not-could you imagine the sports fans missing out on a big play?)

[Norquist Nemesis]

12. The AAR station here in Chicago will air College games

on Saturdays. No problems with broadcast there! :shrug:

Frankly, it's only been about the past month. Can't say that I've experienced it happening at this level of frequency before. It really caught my attention after Schultz came on starting his show about it. I got the distinct impression that he's getting some heat and is feeling threatened (if not outright threatened) for his show to be dropped. His point was clear, though. If you're going to have Dead Air, NO ONE listens; Dead Air means no money!

Oddly enough, he was talking on air with another radio host (who, IIRC was Jay Marvin!), and they were discussing the issue how radio has been taken over by the RW for a number of years now. One of them were even told by management that he was getting fired because his showed had "moved too far to the Left". Rightly so, one of them pointed out, "Have you ever known of a radio host being told their show is moving too far to the Right?"

It almost, ALMOST, sounds like the 'lefty' station owners/management are setting themselves up to intentionally fail. At least that's was the way I took it. :shrug: The recent, and evidently widespread, Dead Air occurrence would seem to lend some weight to that.

[SmokingJacket]

3. If a station keeps cutting out, evenutally people stop going to it.

I didn't listen to the radio for a whole year after lightning damaged a transmitter -- even though it probably got fixed a lot sooner than that. My memory of irritation and frustration was such that I didn't want to even bother.

[Norquist Nemesis]

13. Precisely! No listeners, No money coming in

And they can claim the ratings didn't cut it. Hard numbers without taking any responsibility/blame for poor management putting Dead Air out.

[datasuspect]

4. the simpsons

sunday night broadcasts on the local fox affiliate out of lake chuck, LA/beaumont, TX: screen will go black for 20 minutes or so. this has happened at least 5 times in the past year.

i want to say it is because i live in the bible belt, but it is probably due to incompetence. still, advertisers who are running schedules during that time slot (prime time, sunday night) WOULD have to be reimbursed.

[Norquist Nemesis]

14. Now that's whacky!

We haven't yet had any blackouts like that around here, but we do get the digital squares coming and mucking up the screen and sounds. It happens alot on MSNBC. I always figured that is just some sort of satellite sun spot or something like that.

[Sydnie]

5. I have experienced that on the NY station as well as the Boston one

Even funnier was the day that I could hear Franken in the background at normal speed but an interview (obviously taped at some other point) of someone talking to Ted Kennedy at a faster speed layered on top of Franken. Ted sounded like Alvin ... I kept waiting for someone to say "Ok, Dave". It went on like that for over 5 minutes.

Bizzare for sure.

[Norquist Nemesis]

15. LOL! Streaming is something I put in a little different category

than radio. I realize there are other factors that can affect streaming vs. putting over the public airwaves. But this morning's streaming episode was not a crash of the server. It was connected and streaming; Dead Air was all it was streaming for almost 30 minutes (except for the 15 second commercial at 9:23).

[MrCoffee]

6. Easy answer...alien abductions.

It's not the radio going, out, you're losing time due to the gravitronic time dilation effects of the mothership's propulsion drives. Duh.

Give us a hard one next time.

[Norquist Nemesis]

16. LOL! It's the Mothership that concerns me.

:tinfoilhat:

[acmejack]

7. I don't know but I have had my stream cut out at the worst times!

It always seem right at the words you are straining to hear. I know it is because it is just when my niece is downloading, streaming video and otherwise poaching my bandwidth. But I would rather imagine :tinfoilhat: that it is Agent Mike throwing the "Oh no you don't! switch" in his black helicopter as he hovers over my house.

[Norquist Nemesis]

18. Aha!

*peeking out window checking for Agent Mike and black vehicles*

[TreasonousBastard]

8. In the past week, I've noticed the same thing...

the NPR station I usually listen to goes silent for 5-10 minutes every so often. I suppose I could just call them and ask if they know anything. And find out if it happens to any other stations in the area.

I was thinking some wierd atmospheric or sunspot phenomenon, but it seems to be happening around the country and to both AM and FM, which are rarely affected the same way.

So, then I'm thinking just some new military shit with lousy bandpass filters. Way back when, I was in the signal corps and we used stuff that could tranmit on commercial frequencies. We tried to be careful most of the time, but we could knock out your TV or radio if we screwes up. And the Navy always had stuff that might even fry your radio.

Probably just a satellite problem-- the feed gets screwed up every so often. Limpballs might pay for a backup satellite channel for reliability, but NPR and AAR might not have the funds.

And, yeah, you could put on your tinfoil hat and start looking for shadowy figures who are hacking the satellites or interfering with the local signal.

[Norquist Nemesis]

19. Do you think it's possible that it has anything to do with

the FCC changes upcoming? I'm not knowledgeable at all about how these transmissions actually work. But the government's taking over lower channels for emergency communications...is that with radio, too?

So many questions; so little answers.

[TreasonousBastard]

22. Oy! There are so many possibilities, and I've...

been away from this so long.

It's possible that a newly authorized high-powered and badly filtered single-sideband transmitter that wouldn't normally affect broadcast frequencies could knock out a signal. Properly done, an SSB transmission on 880kH shouldn't affect a broadcast transmission on 880kH, but there's no guarantee.

If the FCC is allowing more such transmissions, that could be a problem. Radio transmitters create things called harmonic frequencies, which are supposedly filtered out, but the filters kind of wear out after a while, and could be tuned wrong in the first place. And some asshole in a military installation could fire up a megawatt transmitter and blow out the signal of 50,000 watt stations for miles around. A lot of stations run on 10,000 watts or less and can easily be blown off the air.

Syndicated radio shows are created in a studio (which can be anywhere, sometimes even the hosts home) and sent out to local stations and transmitters over phone lines, fiberoptic cables and/or satellites. Any one of these transmission points can break down, and the engineers running things should be able to identify and solve the problem. There's almost always some kid of Plan B to switch to, even if it might take a while. Could be that some of those Plan B's have become harder to implement.

Anyway, I suspect it's simply a feed problem, but just what the problem is, I don't know. I am intrigued by the complaints here that it happens to NPR and AAR stations, but no one mentioned if it happens to others. Does it happen across the spectrum-- radio and ideological, or are just "our" stations being hit. If it's only AAR and NPR, I would reach for the tinfoil.

Anybody notice Pacifica or other left-wing stations having dropouts? Right-wing dropouts? Oldies or all-news stations?

[Akim]

9. A Conspiracy Theorist Draws His Conclusion and Then Gathers His Facts. n/t

[orwell]

10. Wasn't that...

...how we ended up in Iraq...or how the official 9/11 conspiracy story was concocted.

Just checking...

[rman]

11. So the OP is not a conspiracy theorist?

It looks like the OP presents facts and then doesn't really draw a conclusion.
Although the facts do look rather suspicious.

Only the gullible are not suspicious of powerful institutions such as (media) corporations, government and intelligence agencies.

[burythehatchet]

17. nice soundbite, but that's actually closer to a description of

the scientific method.

The scientific method has four steps

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

[Javaman]

20. I have been noticing that same thing here in Austin. nt

[Norquist Nemesis]

21. All stations, or otherwise? n/t

[earth mom]

23. It's censorship. No doubt about it. nt