One likes to believe, In the freedom of music...

With thanks to Rush for the lyric.

Radio stations go off the air for lots of reasons: transmitter problems, computer problems, power failures (with lousy backup generators), even operator error (as I discovered this weekend, no not my error).

But I have to say the most interesting way I've ever known a station to be knocked off the air involves appliances.

Back when I first started in radio, I worked in Birmingham, Alabama. It's where I met my husband. I had recently been a traffic reporter and got hired across town to be an actual news anchor for a group of stations. One of my tasks was to do a quick live news cast each morning for our AC (Adult Contemporary) station down the hall. Then I'd record one and they could air it the rest of the morning.

Rob and Shannon were pretty big in the building. They got things their own way, because they brought in revenue. And something that Shannon got was appliances. She'd brought in a toaster, a microwave and a coffee maker just for their studio. Fortunately for them, they had the biggest studio in the building, second only to the talk studio. I was often the recipient of toasted pastries or microwave oatmeal in the morning, which was good, because I usually didn't have enough money to buy breakfast.

One morning, about 4:30 or so, the whole building got rocked by a power surge. We thought maybe someone had hit a power pole, so I dutifully started calling the power company, the cops, anyone who could tell me about a power surge up on Red Mountain where the studios were located. No one had any idea what I was talking about.

Then the building maintenance guy rings the news room.

"Are you guys on or off the air?"

"Hang on a sec....we're on," I say. "Why, who's off?"

"Well, you might have a few stations off, that surge came from inside the building, a bunch of breakers have tripped up there."

I checked with Ray, and most of our other stations were fine, just little blips in the programming, but everyone was still on the air.

Except Magic.

Shannon had tried running the toaster, coffee maker and microwave all at the same time. She had also added a small table lamp "for ambience" that morning, and apparently overloaded a circuit. She'd also made the mistake of plugging these items into the power bar with the computer that ran the music software.

Magic was dead, and had the smoking outlets to prove it.

Why there was no back-up system to prevent the equipment from blowing up is beyond me. How she managed to short out the board is also beyond me, since I'm not an engineer. But I do know our engineer said it wasn't his fault, and that Shannon never should have had all her food equipment in the studio.

And then the phone started ringing.

"Do y'all know you're off the air?"

"Yes, we're aware of the problem, thank you for calling."

"Well, then why don't you say something?"

"How can we tell you we are off the air, when we are off the air?"

And, that, by the way, happens every time a station goes off the air. Someone inevitably tells us, we should get on the mic and let everyone know. It never occurs to them that if we could actually transmit something, we would be playing music.

Eventually, a CD player was brought in and new mics, and a makeshift show happened a few hours later, but it took a while to get the board fixed.

I really missed having breakfast every morning, too.