WGN/Chicago Midday Tuesday STL Crash Temporarily Took Station Silent

A Little Dead Air

TRIBUNE MEDIA News-Talk WGN-A/CHICAGO went silent TUESDAY (7/30) during its noon business show, and the station had to scramble to keep programming on the air after the main studio-transmitter link crashed.

Station Mgr. & VP/Content TODD MANLEY told the CHICAGO TRIBUNE that the culprit was a studio router crash, adding, “The transmitter was never off the air, but there was no audio. It was painful.” The station went silent for 10 minutes as engineers were able to then put tapes of STEVE COCHRAN's morning show and LOU MANFREDINI's weekend home repair show on the air from the transmitter; by 12:30, the normally streaming-only "Bonus Hour" of BILL LEFF and WENDY SNYDER's show was patched into the broadcast signal, and STEVE BERTRAND was able to get back on the air for the last 15 minutes of the business hour from the main studio.

MANLEY said that the station had planned for a longer outage, with afternoon host ROE CONN poised to head to the transmitter in ELK GROVE VILLAGE to broadcast from there if necessary. The crash also took out the phones and Internet access in the studios.

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