Dead Air Is The Enemy

When much of downtown Peoria, IL was hit by a massive power outage on the morning of Tuesday, July 18, Alpha Media’s Peoria stations quickly swung into action to stay on the air and fulfill their prime directive to serve the community. The stations capitalized on the uniqueness of the situation through Facebook Live and other web and social media, while News-Talk 1470/100.3 WMBD went old school by broadcasting from the transmitter site.

Greg Batton, co-host of WMBD’s Greg and Dan morning show, Traffic Reporter Ken Zurski, Chief Engineer Wayne Miller and other staffers packed up a caravan of station vehicles and headed out to the transmitter site in Tazewell County, where Batton and Zurski stayed on the air commercial-free during the outage. That’s Batton, pictured at the station’s luxurious transmitter facility. Other staffers sent WMBD content via Marti to another tower site for three more Alpha stations, and then OM Randy Rundle joined Batton and Zurski for this unique show.

Batton’s co-host Dan DiOrio, News Anchor Ed Hammond and Producer Cory Wara hung back at the studio in case the power came back on, and along with the morning shows from the other Alpha stations, fed content to social media and station websites via cell data. Zurski later said, “It was a throwback and kind of an educational thing for me. I do remember not having computers and doing it old school… and this was definitely old school. We had no indication there was a problem, and all of a sudden — BOOM! The power is out. We did our best to inform listeners of what was going on while doing whatever we could to get back on the air.”

SVP/Market Manager Mike Wild later commented, “Our No. 1 priority is serving the community, and I’m extra proud of our team for how they handled this unscripted situation. They moved quickly and were able to keep our listeners and users well informed. This is what Alpha Media is all about; live and local!”