What the heck happened to KTLK yesterday morning?

[Berry Cool]

Did this happen for people who were listening to it on the radio too?

I was listening to Stephanie Miller on streaming yesterday morning as usual (can't get her show on any of the local stations) and after the news at the top of 10 AM here (7 AM in Los Angeles), the show DISAPPEARED as I kept being bombarded with one PSA after another...oftentimes the same one in a row.

After I'd finally had about 25 minutes of hearing about how buzzed driving is drunk driving, how important it is to be a friend to a person dealing with mental illness, how I should adopt a child from foster care, etc., and couldn't take it any more, I finally abandoned KTLK's streaming and looked for some others. Ended up listening to a station in Miami, where I learned I had missed all of "Stand-Up News" because of the PSA blizzard.

Steph does the show out of KTLK and at one point I recall her saying something a little later like "We're back after a long vacation!" or something like that. I wonder if it was because she realized somebody there goofed up big on something. It was like whoever regularly slots the commercials into the breaks was on vacation and the fill-in fell asleep at the board or something. I mean, sometimes the commercials do seem to go on and on, but this time they REALLY went ON and ON and ON and ON... :boring:

Ed. to fix time of problem

[KharmaTrain]

1. Sounds Like Technical Difficulties

Could be the station lost the network feed and had to fill time until they could get it back working. Since most stations use automation systems now, they don't play music but will fire commercials, PSA or promos to keep something on the air.

It could also be that the station was doing a local commercials that they didn't want aired on the Internet...I've heard that on several feeds that either go silent or will play a lot of PSAs to fill the time (sometimes up to 10 minutes).

I listen to AAR via WCPT's internet feed. Even though the station goes off the air at sunset, their internet feed goes 24/7. I also tune into KPNX in Phoenix. If I can't catch a show on one station, I can catch it on the other.

[mwb970]

2. This seems to happen a lot on "liberal" radio stations.

The righties are on numerous 50,000-watt "clear channel" powerhouses that can be heard in Finland. Our shows are on 100-watt "graveyard channels" that you can barely pick up right under the antenna. Their stations are run by communications professionals; ours appear to be run by monkeys, or by machines built by monkeys. Dead air, poor audio, missing shows, and two commercials running at once are all "par for the course".

All of this despite the fact that their viewpoint is supported by about 25% of the public and ours by 75%. It's the same old story. The minority rules, just like in Congress (as long as the R's are the minority!).

[fasttense]

4. Radical right wing neocon radio hasn't always been

a powerhouse. I remember driving cross country in the 90s and having nothing but music to listen to. I tuned into Dr. Laura and some Rush wanabe. They cut off the fake Dr. and suddenly I was listening to a rabid right wing talk show host. But then he was cut off by so many commercials that I finally went back to listening to music. Their stations faded in and out as badly as ever.

It will take a while for all the Liberal stations to bring in enough money to afford better technical people.

[MiniMe]

3. I noticed that on a few Saturday evenings, AAR on XM radio

wasn't broadcasting AAR, they were broadcasting a continuous loop that stated that they were going to take over some of AAR's bandwidth to broadcast college football games, and apologizing for any inconvenience. Well, thats nice, they actually warned us, but do they need to interrupt AAR's broadcast to broadcast a continuous loop?

[CK_John]

5. Somebody forgot to pay the bill. n/t