For a moment I thought the Little Voice in the Wilderness
somehow made its way all the way from Liberty Corners
into the Binghamton, NY area cable system. Turns out it was
only a power loss... or so "they" say.
Power loss cuts into TV, radio programs
Some hear audio from radio show
BY SCOTT ROCKEFELLER
Press & Sun-Bulletin
The male voice talking on cable about Supreme Court rulings, the 10 Commandments and Thomas Jefferson on Monday night was the result of a power failure and not a hacker, cable officials said.
Shortly after 9 p.m., a weekly test message came across every Binghamton-area Time Warner Cable channel, said Dave Whalen, vice president of marketing. However, due to a power supply failure at Citadel Communications, the message lasted several minutes and featured the audio from a WNBF radio program.
"A tone opens up the message and another shuts it off, but it did not close, so last night it lasted about three minutes where it's usually 15 to 20 seconds," Whalen said. "We had a couple of calls from people who assumed it was some sort of right-wing conspiracy and I can assure you that's not the case."
Whalen said because it was a required weekly Citadel test, there was nothing the cable station could do to stop the feed. Whalen said that type of error had never occurred before.
Mary Beth Walsh, Citadel Communications' market manager, and Whalen were unsure of the exact time that the interruption occurred. Walsh said WNBF airs Rusty Humphries' show until 9 p.m., switches to ABC news and then starts Michael Savage's show shortly after.
The failure also interrupted regularly scheduled radio programming, with Citadel's 98.1 The Hawk overtaking several stations for about three minutes.
Walsh said a new power supply unit had been ordered and would be replaced shortly.
"There was no hacker," she said.
Some of the programs that were interrupted included the New York Yankees' late-game comeback effort against the Baltimore Orioles, FOX's new reality show Hell's Kitchen and a showing of the 1997 Harrison Ford movie Air Force One.
And just in case you decided to read a book after the interruption, here's what happened: the Yankees won 6-4, Chris was booted from the kitchen and the bad guys lost.
