They think this is WORSE that anything Y2K could throw at them?

LINK

Sound and the fury: Silence at 10 stuns Channel 7 staff

By Jim Kirk
Tribune Media Columnist December 3, 1999

Forget about the Y2K computer problem:
ABC-Ch. 7 has bigger potential catastrophes to worry about when it comes to keeping its broadcast on the air.

Like its own cleaning service.

Newsroom staffers are calling it the "Y2 floor buffer problem."

After all, the station is blaming the piece of cleaning equipment for a major technical snafu on the last night of the all-important November sweeps period.

The station says that a cleaning person mistakenly plugged the floor buffer into the same power outlet as the station's master control board, knocking out audio on the city's top-rated news station for 25 minutes Wednesday night -- including the last 20 minutes of "20/20" and the first five minutes of its 10 p.m. newscast.

Viewers still saw images because the video feeds go directly to the station's transmitter.

Even though the station knew the sound was out, top anchors John Drury and Diann Burns led the newscast as if nothing unusual was happening.

The vulnerability of the No. 1 late newscast to something like a floor buffer left staffers stunned Thursday. Many questioned why no one had protected the station from such a problem.

Station General Manager Emily Barr said she had no way to prepare for a problem like this. "For very legitimate reasons, we had a technological catastrophe," she said.............

=================

Gee, they had "no way to prepare for a problem like this".

uh, if its so important, how about have a dedicated circuit for the main control board?

but of course, there was "no way to prepare for a problem like this"

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), December 03, 1999