Word from Scott Fybush [1] that the weather system that brought us all the snow David spoke of yesterday, brought down a bunch of TV and radio stations in the Scranton area.
Just before 7:00 Sunday morning, the 823-foot tower of ABC affiliate WNEP-TV (Channel 16) atop Penobscot Mountain, east of Wilkes-Barre, collapsed under the weight of ice that had formed there overnight.
As it fell, the tower’s guy wires apparently hit the next tower over on the mountain, belonging to public broadcasters WVIA-TV (Channel 44), WVIA-DT (Channel 41) and WVIA-FM (89.9), toppling the upper portion of that tower and taking those TV/DT signals off the air.
The WNEP tower fell on the station’s transmitter building, damaging most of the equipment inside, including the station’s two analog transmitters. (WNEP-DT is at a different tower location on Penobscot, and it was on the air through much of the storm, albeit at reduced power.)
Scott has pictures of the mess that’s inside those transmitter buildings, and believe me. It is going to take a short period of time to overcome. To make matters even worse for the station, their analog transmitter is going to be retired in 2009 in any event, so I’m not quite sure whether or not WNEP is even going to bother restoring an analog signal to the Valley. certainly, it’s not going to be a full power signal in any event.
Scott has more in the way of reports from down that way, and is as good as anybody in the business for keeping on top of such things.