Channel 3 Has Been Off The Air Since 12:30 p.m.

[Henry]

Just got home from Burlington and Maryann tells me that Channel 3 went off the air at 12:30 - They just came back on a few minutes ago.  Maryann called them and they informed her that Digital was a whole new world - If they hadn't come up, I thought of calling them and seeing if they could have JoeT come back over there for a few minutes and help them out.  They were off the air on both the satellite and over the air by antenna.

[Henry]

Not a word on last night's Channel 3 News - When the areas largest and most powerful station goes off the air for an hour, I think that is pretty big news.  I can understand why the other local stations would not mention it, but not Channel 3.  Sent them a note and asked them if they could give me a non technical explanation why they were off the air.

By the way, they went High Definition the day before yesterday at noon.  Maybe that was it.  I still have the old style TVs, so means nothing to me.

[JoeT]

There was a power failure yesterday (Stowe Electric) on Mount Mansfield.  Due to a problem with the emergency generators, all commercial stations were off the air.  VPT stayed on the air as we have our own generator set.

Anyone with cable probably never saw any problem as local stations feed the head ends directly rather than over the air.

Hey, when you lose you TV, that's a good time to go make a  C O O L  pitcher of iced tea and sit in front of a fan!



Joe

[Henry]

Hi Joe,

Thanks, Nothing that important for me, Maryann was taping some Soaps and I was out grocery shopping as my family from Bellows Falls is coming up this weekend.  Interesting that WCAX doesn't have generators also.

[JoeT]

WCAX does have generators (the ones that failed) , they are also shared by WVNY, WFFF, and WPTZ.

[Henry]

Below is the note I sent to Channel 3 regarding the outage:

Hi,

Apparently I missed it or you didn't mention anything about it.  Right after Across The Fence yesterday, your station was off the air.  I wasn't home, but my wife switched over to antenna from our Dish Network and that was off too.  Those that tape their soaps from 12:30 to 1:30 got nothing and I am sure would be interested in a non technical explanation as to what happened.  Surprisingly enough, I heard nothing on last night's news nor did I see anything on your web site. 

Any chance you can tell me what happened??  When the biggest and most powerful TV Station goes off the air, this would seem to me to be pretty big news.  My wife called the station and the person who answered sounded rather up tight.

Below is the response that I got from Marselis Parsons which pretty much agrees with JoeT:

We should have reported it.   our mistake.    Most viewers did not recognize it as we feed comcast and the satellite companies direct and only a small percentage of our viewers get channel 3 off air.   you should have gotten us on Dish.. no others reported it off as far as i know.     Stowe electric had an outage due to construction of a high voltage power line... and our generator sets apparently had some difficulty phasing with each other.. and knocked each other out.     by the time our engineers could remedy the problem we had been off air overan hour.   My apologies.
 
Marselis Parsons
WCAX TV News

[mirjo]

It was nice of him to respond to you.