THOUSAND OAKS : Power Problems Halt Broadcast
Commuters expecting to listen to National Public Radio’s Morning Edition could hear only static and dead air Thursday morning, as power problems caused Ventura County’s public radio station to stop broadcasting.
KCLU, based at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, was off the air for two hours Wednesday night because of a power failure, station manager Dan Kuntz said.
After the power was restored, a surge of electricity knocked out a $5,000 piece of equipment, keeping the station off the air for more than six hours Thursday morning, Kuntz said.
The broken “studio-transmitter link” was repaired in Santa Barbara under warranty. The station began broadcasting again at 11:15 a.m. Thursday, after engineers installed the fixed part.
While Kuntz called the dead air “a nightmare,” he and other station officials saw a bright side to the incident.
“Quite a few people have been calling, and it lets us know how many people are listening out there,” said Gladys Battle, a Cal Lutheran student who was answering the phone at the station Thursday morning.
The funniest response, Kuntz said, was from a listener who thought the static was the result of congressional Republicans succeeding with plans to slash funding for public broad-casting.
“I knew there were going to be cuts, but I didn’t realize they were going to be this soon,” the caller told Kuntz.
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