Broadcast Equipment Failure in Early Television

[bgadow]

I had often wondered if they had such redundancy at the network level. I do recall seeing some extended dead air on primetime network TV; at least a couple times on ABC back in the mid/late 80s. It seemed pretty obvious that it wasn't a local issue.

I sure remember all the technical difficulties that WTTG-5 in DC had running the old cartoons I loved to watch every day as a kid. Of course, I kinda enjoyed those myself. I always pictured that announcer standing by the mic all day, ready to jump on the air at a moments notice to state, "we are experiencing technical difficulties...please stand by." I wonder what kind of equipment that former DuMont-owned station was using in the 70s?

During station breaks the network would show (still do, I guess) their logo and the locals would insert their i.d. at the bottom. On several occasions I saw the WCBS-2 logo show up on the whole network. Another neat thing was to see the WBAL-11 logo show up on local WBOC-16. I know that they used to get network feeds over-the-air from other stations. I suppose in that case they either had to quickly throw up their own slide instead of the network version, or otherwise cover up that other stations logo somehow.