Javacrucian: Every time I read a story like this I have to wonder wtf the people in the control room are doing. Seriously, with as often as this stuff happens one would think that all over the country the guys who run these things are spending every minute they have to spare watching porn on some parallel feed. "Ok everyone, we go live in two minutes, so standby for broadcast; meanwhile, the rest of you get that DVD of Big Boys In Boots up and running, I want to bust a nut before first commercial!".

I lol'd.

But considering how many stations are broadcasting in countless regions around the country, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, these stories are actually pretty rare.

HA!

I remember listening to WNEW-FM back in 19...80something? 90something? I forget.

They transferred from on DJ to another but instead went to the 'wrong' studio where a couple of people were having noisy sex. I have always wondered how accidental that really was.

/CSB
//also heard their helicopter reporter crash into the Hudson and die. Not so CSB

Javacrucian: Every time I read a story like this I have to wonder wtf the people in the control room are doing. Seriously, with as often as this stuff happens one would think that all over the country the guys who run these things are spending every minute they have to spare watching porn on some parallel feed. "Ok everyone, we go live in two minutes, so standby for broadcast; meanwhile, the rest of you get that DVD of Big Boys In Boots up and running, I want to bust a nut before first commercial!".

It isn't always somebody in the control room. Stations transmit on relatively low power from the studio to the broadcast tower. It is relatively simple (but quite illegal) to either override their signal with a more powerful one close to the receiver or to flat out disconnect their receiver and splice in your own audio source for broadcast.

We had a station near us that used to play bad elevator style Jazz. Then somebody got bored and drunk and next thing you knew for two days solid their tower was broadcasting a loop of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.

Hacker_X: Javacrucian: Every time I read a story like this I have to wonder wtf the people in the control room are doing. Seriously, with as often as this stuff happens one would think that all over the country the guys who run these things are spending every minute they have to spare watching porn on some parallel feed. "Ok everyone, we go live in two minutes, so standby for broadcast; meanwhile, the rest of you get that DVD of Big Boys In Boots up and running, I want to bust a nut before first commercial!".

It isn't always somebody in the control room. Stations transmit on relatively low power from the studio to the broadcast tower. It is relatively simple (but quite illegal) to either override their signal with a more powerful one close to the receiver or to flat out disconnect their receiver and splice in your own audio source for broadcast.

We had a station near us that used to play bad elevator style Jazz. Then somebody got bored and drunk and next thing you knew for two days solid their tower was broadcasting a loop of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.

That's actually pretty funny.

Wonder if that could be done if you identified the company broadcasting musak to, say, Exxon. Have environmentalist propaganda Al Gore speeches instead. Or readings from Adam Smith for the democratic national committee.

Or Washington, Jefferson or Franklin for all of them.

That could get amusing.

/And also old pretty quick.

Hacker_X: Javacrucian: Every time I read a story like this I have to wonder wtf the people in the control room are doing. Seriously, with as often as this stuff happens one would think that all over the country the guys who run these things are spending every minute they have to spare watching porn on some parallel feed. "Ok everyone, we go live in two minutes, so standby for broadcast; meanwhile, the rest of you get that DVD of Big Boys In Boots up and running, I want to bust a nut before first commercial!".

It isn't always somebody in the control room. Stations transmit on relatively low power from the studio to the broadcast tower. It is relatively simple (but quite illegal) to either override their signal with a more powerful one close to the receiver or to flat out disconnect their receiver and splice in your own audio source for broadcast.

We had a station near us that used to play bad elevator style Jazz. Then somebody got bored and drunk and next thing you knew for two days solid their tower was broadcasting a loop of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.

Didn't someone also hijack a local television feed back in the 80's? I wanna say it was in Chicago or some other fairly large city.

Boom chicka wah whoops.

And now for Brubeck's incomparable "Take Five". . . inches.

Considering that most Jazz is basically a bunch of musicians masturbating with their instruments, jizz is the expected end result.

/There's a lot of great jazz out there
//There's a metric farkton more terrible, terrible jazz

Archie Goodwin: And in the twink of an eye, someone gets fired.

Look, he SAID he wanted a shot to the face.

happens on television all the time

and then some things are just done without anyone thinking about what they are saying

about 1:05 into this clip

Link

pag1107: Neondistraction: Hacker_X: Javacrucian: Every time I read a story like this I have to wonder wtf the people in the control room are doing. Seriously, with as often as this stuff happens one would think that all over the country the guys who run these things are spending every minute they have to spare watching porn on some parallel feed. "Ok everyone, we go live in two minutes, so standby for broadcast; meanwhile, the rest of you get that DVD of Big Boys In Boots up and running, I want to bust a nut before first commercial!".

It isn't always somebody in the control room. Stations transmit on relatively low power from the studio to the broadcast tower. It is relatively simple (but quite illegal) to either override their signal with a more powerful one close to the receiver or to flat out disconnect their receiver and splice in your own audio source for broadcast.

We had a station near us that used to play bad elevator style Jazz. Then somebody got bored and drunk and next thing you knew for two days solid their tower was broadcasting a loop of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.

Didn't someone also hijack a local television feed back in the 80's? I wanna say it was in Chicago or some other fairly large city.

I thought it was the HBO satellite feed.

It was WGN and WTTW in Chicago and it was Max Headroom

News Report about it (new window)

Neondistraction: Didn't someone also hijack a local television feed back in the 80's? I wanna say it was in Chicago or some other fairly large city.

It's happened a few times, and some of the assult vectors are the same as for radio. This Cracked article(^) is a pretty good reference for a few of them, as well as how they work.

/ yes, I called a Cracked link a 'reference'
// put THAT in your Works Cited and smoke it!
/// ham operator... always tempted to play with local radio stations. but felonies, are not for me!

Jizz music?



\hot
\\like jizz

GeekTheMighty: Neondistraction: Didn't someone also hijack a local television feed back in the 80's? I wanna say it was in Chicago or some other fairly large city.

It's happened a few times, and some of the assult vectors are the same as for radio. This Cracked article(^) is a pretty good reference for a few of them, as well as how they work.

/ yes, I called a Cracked link a 'reference'
// put THAT in your Works Cited and smoke it!
/// ham operator... always tempted to play with local radio stations. but felonies, are not for me!

Ahh yes, I believe the cracked article is where I initially read about it.

How did they know it was a "gay" soundtrack? Does gay porn sound different?

/TFA said "moans and groans".
//deep voiced woman?

Leading to the question of "how is a gay porn soundtrack any different than any other porn soundtrack?"

I'd preliminarily assume there's lyrics involved.

*reads the article*

The newspaper described the adult soundtrack as "several minutes of moans and groans".

So, yeah. Lyrics.

I guess funky sensations became spunky sensations instead.

Can I just point something out?

More: Amusing, Jazz FM, gay porn, Escape, Nick Jonas

LordOfThePings: Boom chicka wah whoops.

That took long enough. I expected a 'bow-chicka-wow-wow' type of remark to be in the initial contribution of enlightenment to this thread.

Nobody complained because 5 minutes of gay porn was still better than listening to another Kenny G song.

Pffftt....

Did some naughty things in studio and live on air a couple times. Left mic on, but only barely... Attempted subliminal mood setters... They never worked...or did they?

A certain station I was at got cable TV installed in the air studio. (Long story, not important to this one.) The engineer got the bright idea to connect the audio from that to the patch bay. I suggested this might be a bad idea, but was ignored. It didn't take long for some of the jocks to figure out that with a couple patch cables, they could bring in the audio from the TV. We didn't have any special stations in our setup, but that only meant that the *image* was scrambled -- the audio was not. One of these scrambled stations was Playboy On Demand. You can write the rest of this yourself.

Javacrucian: I have to wonder wtf the people in the control room are doing.

TFA says that the station insists it was "unauthorised access to the live feed". That suggests (assuming it's true) an outside agency, or at least someone not in legal control of the station at the time. Pirate hijacking, perhaps, which has happened before.

tomWright: They transferred from on DJ to another but instead went to the 'wrong' studio where a couple of people were having noisy sex. I have always wondered how accidental that really was.

I would call it unlikely. 'Switching' studios means either patching in another studio to whichever one is at the head of the signal chain at the moment, or changing the chainhead using an A/B switch, is not something that's likely to happen accidentally. Moreover, the 'wrong' studio would have to have an open mic, which also seems unlikely to happen accidentally. I'd find it much more likely that someone faded up a sexy feed, which is a lot easier to do by accident, depending on the studio setup. But I think it's most likely to be just another fourth-grade radio stunt. All that's without having heard it, of course, so it's pure Grade A speculation. I just think the explanation is unlikely.

tomWright: //also heard their helicopter reporter crash into the Hudson and die. Not so CSB

On the afternoon of October 22, 1986, the station's "N-Copter" traffic helicopter crashed into the Hudson River killing traffic reporter Jane Dornacker and severely injuring pilot Bill Pate. As millions of WNBC listeners heard Dornacker giving her traffic report she suddenly paused, a grinding noise could be heard in the background and Dornacker screaming in terror "Hit the water! Hit the water! Hit the water!", then the radio transmission was cut off and a very shaken radio host Joey Reynolds awkwardly tried to figure out what had happened by saying "Okay, we're going to play some, uh, some music here, I think." Dornacker had recently gotten back to flying in a helicopter after surviving a previous crash of the N-Copter into the Hackensack River in New Jersey a few months earlier.

:(

Hacker_X: We had a station near us that used to play bad elevator style Jazz. Then somebody got bored and drunk and next thing you knew for two days solid their tower was broadcasting a loop of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.

I'd be interested to hear more. This story, in various forms, has been connected to a number of different stations, on both sides of the country, but it's difficult to verify these kinds of tales. I'm beginning to think it's either a common stunt, or, probably more likely, an oft-told tale, as these things often are. Just for starters, would you be willing to give me some idea of where this happened?

In every other story, by the way, at least among the ones I've read, this was done as a promotional stunt. I have to tell you that it's extremely unlikely to happen because of tampering. Radio stations are required to do all kinds of regular monitoring, and it's very unlikely that something like this would go on without their knowledge, especially for so long. I'm not saying it's not true, only that it's very unlikely to be true as you heard it.

tomWright: Wonder if that could be done if you identified the company broadcasting musak to, say, Exxon. Have environmentalist propaganda Al Gore speeches instead. Or readings from Adam Smith for the democratic national committee.

Muzak Holdings programming is distributed by satellite. Good luck. If someone succeeds, though, it would be epic.

GeekTheMighty: /// ham operator... always tempted to play with local radio stations. but felonies, are not for me!

Yeah, that's the thing. The closer you get to radio, the more you know how to do stuff like that, but the more you know why not to.

hamfast gamgee: How did they know it was a "gay" soundtrack? Does gay porn sound different?

I was wondering that, too, but I'm not going to question it too much.

Rickj: Nobody complained because 5 minutes of gay porn was still better than listening to another Kenny G song.

I'm going to tell you a story that you won't believe, that you'll think is made up. I'm only saying that because I want you to know that you won't hurt my feelings if you call me a liar; I'd have trouble believing it, too, if I wasn't there.

I was a projectionist for a few years in a run-down '50s-era one-screen cinema. This place had dual over-under projectors, just like you see in 'classic' depictions of such places. A full reel for one of the two machines holds about an hour of film, so a feature film takes two reels, one mounted on each machine. At a certain point near the middle of the film, an automated changeover switches the show from one machine to the other.

When you've got two different films running in a weekly schedule, you've got four big reels knocking around. We were running two films that week: Disney's 'Alladin' and 'The Piano'. We ran kiddie matinees and the grown-up film in the evenings. The night projectionist would set up the matinee on the machines so that they day projectionist only had to start the show.

You're way ahead of me.

A full reel is made up of smaller stock reels, which is how films used to distributed (and maybe still are, I wouldn't know at this point. A typical two-hour film would come to us on six stock reels. Reels 1-3 would go on Show Reel 1, and stock reels 4-6 would go on Show Reel 2. Stock Reel 4 of 'The Piano' opens with a closeup of Harvey Keitel's dick.

I was watching from the back of the moviehouse during the changeover. I have never in my life cleared a whole stairway as fast as I did that afternoon. I probably also never remounted and started a full feel as fast as I did that day, either. Then I took several deep breaths and started down the stairs, to hand out refunds.

But no one asked for one. No one complained. No one even came out, or said anything after the show.

I've got some crazy radio stories, too, but none as heartstopping in my memory as that one.

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: Hacker_X: We had a station near us that used to play bad elevator style Jazz. Then somebody got bored and drunk and next thing you knew for two days solid their tower was broadcasting a loop of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.

I'd be interested to hear more. This story, in various forms, has been connected to a number of different stations, on both sides of the country, but it's difficult to verify these kinds of tales. I'm beginning to think it's either a common stunt, or, probably more likely, an oft-told tale, as these things often are. Just for starters, would you be willing to give me some idea of where this happened?

In every other story, by the way, at least among the ones I've read, this was done as a promotional stunt. I have to tell you that it's extremely unlikely to happen because of tampering. Radio stations are required to do all kinds of regular monitoring, and it's very unlikely that something like this would go on without their knowledge, especially for so long. I'm not saying it's not true, only that it's very unlikely to be true as you heard it.

I just looked it up and it seems very likely that it was in fact a stunt. A lot more stuff is archived for searching on the internet than there used to be and wikipedia has expanded extensively. It turns out that the exact same stunt was used in several markets to launch a series of "urban" stations.

The one near me was 98.7 WSMJ in Knoxville TN and then with that stunt in 2002 they switched over to WYIL.

Here is a wiki link on another station that just happened to pull the EXACT same stunt with almost the exact same story. They just left out the part about a boat since they were inland.

Link (new window)

pag1107:

I thought it was the HBO satellite feed.

You are thinking of the incident with Captain Midnight. That dude wasn't exactly using consumer gear in his back yard.

Link (new window)

Hacker_X: the EXACT same stunt

Okay, this is starting to map out as a (mercifully) short-lived promotional stunt during the heady years following the devastating '96 Telecom Act, when radio went into a nationwide feeding frenzy.

(Background: Before the Act, the FCC maintained nationwide per-service ownership caps, in a scheme known as 30-30-30: A single entity could own up to 30 stations each of AM, FM, and TV. The Telecom Act eliminated nationwide radio ownership caps, allowing a handful of owners to rapidly buy up hundreds more stations. By the end of the decade, just a few suddenly huge telecom companies owned the majority of U.S. broadcast media; Clear Channel of East Texas went from 60 radio stations to over one thousand -- nearly one in every eleven radio stations nationwide, and sometimes up to eight in a single market.)

I've connected the stunt so far to Entercom and Cumulus, two of the giant telecoms, but not found a direct connection between the two. In all the cases of the stunt I've found so far, it was done as a promotional stunt to promote a changeover of a station to a modern urban format, so that appears to be a common element. It might have been a format branding effort, which could involve more than one owner.