When I was in radio, I experienced three FCC inspections. At the first, I was the jock on-air at a Top-40/Paid Religion combo. The record I had on-air when it began was "One Of A Kind (Love Affair)" by The Spinners. The "original" version, with the line "Makes you want to love her. You just got to (deleted) her." The Inspector was not impressed. Next time, (Different station) the inspector was inspecting all of our licenses. Looking at one license, the inspector said "That operator's license is expired!" Our CE replied, "So, is the operator!" The idea of keeping the license of a deceased employee where it hung during his lifetime didn't go over well with the FCC guy. The third one (still at the second inspected station-when you're on the air for years with a "postcard on the wall", you probably get inspected more often), it was "Legal ID" time. Because of a unique format (Classical), the FCC informally allowed a "special ID" because of the AM and FM having the same call, but Licensed to different cities. We were allowed "Wxxx (City A), FM (City B)" The FCC guy asks "Any of you guys hams?" Our CE, Maintenance Guy, and I raised our hands. The FCC guy gave his callsign and asked, "Any of you DX'ers?" We were all Technicians. I was the closest to being a DX'er on six meters. The inspector said, "Isn't 'FM' the prefix for Martinique?" While the network news was still on, I excused myself to the men's room. Using the house phone unseen by the FCC guy, I called the studio and told the announcer to come out of the news cold with "Wxxx (City A) Wxxx-FM (City B)" and that I would explain later. Fortunately, she did and we were off the hook. More unpleasant in a way was when I was involved in an interference complaint. In this case, a prominent TV station (Network O&O) was the victim. But that one got me an HF ham antenna where such were otherwise banned. And, is another story for perhaps another time... 73
Great stories! With all the rule changes and lack of personnel these days, more than likely the only time you’ll get a visit is for a complaint. But there may be that over zealous inspector who wants to “walk the beat.”
Merry Christmas everyone! My father had to drive me to the FCC office in D.C. to take my test. Why? I was only 15. I started DX'ing AM and then SW. Until I heard (and QSL'ed) XEMO-860 (5KW om 860 from Tijuana) and 4VEH Cap Haitien, Haiti (9770 KHz with 2.5 KW.) from Alexandria, VA. Then, I started into TVDX. Bagged over 300 stations in the analog era. Gave me a career. Started a week after my 18th birthday because VA considered all broadcast transmitters "hazardous equipment"! Stops along the way included RKO General before my last stop, Cox, where I stayed almost twenty years until health compelled retirement. 73
The FCC is generally not a fire breathing dragon. Our ham radio club did have an encounter with them and the FAA. A problem occured with one of our repeaters. It was being heard on ATC frequencies. I don't care which radio service you're in, that is a big No-no! Never interfere with air traffic control, ever. It was cold and wet, but we still went up that tower 500 ft to investigate. First I found out that it wasn't just aircraft frequencies we were being heard on, it was over most of the radio spectrum. I traced the problem to some frayed AC wiring. There was a 10 watt UHF transmitter up there beside our repeater's cabinet. Somebody wired it with zip cord in these awful conditions, full weather exposure. This essentially created a spark gap transmitter in this RF rich environment. It was mixing heavily with our repeater since they were next door neighbors plus everything else out there and coupling into the TV tower. One of the idiots with me actually grabbed those bare wires. I pulled the plug on that thing and came back on a nice warm day and rewired it with outdoor grade wiring. Both Federal agencies went away and left us alone after that. If you do get a notice from the FCC, if you will resolve the problem right away, they will usually play nice. If you decide to ignore them, then they will get nastier
Man, we had so many things when I worked in small-market radio that could have gotten us into trouble with the FCC, it wasn't even funny. True story. One night, I'm working late at the station, running the board for one of our local college basketball games or something. I get a phone call from a guy claiming to be from the FCC. I ask him what can I help him with. It seems that our relay transmitter from the studio to the broadcast transmitter site had gone down. Rather than get a backup unit, our cheapskate station owner decided to just use a Marti unit that we used for remotes to transmit the signal back to the tower site. The supposed FCC inspector informed me that we were causing interference to another station's Marti transmitter that was using the same frequency. I tell the guy I was unaware of this, and that our owner was at his home, some 60 miles away. I told the guy I would go shut off the Marti transmitter if he wished, but then our station would be off the air, and we would just be broadcasting, "dead air." We didn't have a way to remotely shut down the transmitter site at this particular station. The guy told me to hold off in doing that. Not sure how that ever got resolved, I just told our station owner about it, and let him handle it. Then there was the time a guy at one of our sister stations let out a stream of profanity, not realizing he was on the air at the time. That incident made the local newspaper, but didn't get us an FCC fine. The guy didn't get fired, but I'm sure he got a severe sit-down meeting with the owner about wearing headphones, etc. Did I mention that when I started working in radio, I worked for about 2 years out of the 4 that I worked in radio during college, without a Radiotelephone Operator's license? It wasn't until someone mentioned something about their license that I started asking questions. The subject just never came up during my hiring process, which didn't surprise me, knowing our station owner. Our station owner just told me he had assumed that I had gotten my license through one of my college broadcasting classes, which I didn't. My dad had worked in radio about 20 years earlier, and he thought you no longer had to have a license to work in commercial radio. Yeah, he thought wrong. What else? Oh yeah, how about the fact that we weren't allowed to play the unedited version of Lou Reed's, "Take a Walk On The Wild Side," although a guy did it once. Before I worked for our local AM station, I know they weren't allowed to play Styx's, "Too Much Time On My Hands," until after 8:00 P.M. because it contained the word, "damn." Boy, have we come a long way since then! I was running the audio board for an evening newscast one night about 25 years ago at WTVQ-TV, the local ABC affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky. We had a field reporter out with the remote truck, and our truck op had inadvertently left a mic on somewhere in the truck. For some reason, he let out a, "F--k!," at the top of his lungs. The guy didn't get fired, but our news director came into the control room with an odd look on his face, asking me what happened. We also had master control ops that never checked tower lights until our production manager called them out on it. 73, DE KU4UV
Our local FOX affiliate in Lexington is WDKY. WDKY went on the air back in 1985. There was an old urban legend that one night back in the mid 80's, when they were still just a podunk independent station, one of the master control ops decided to air a few minutes of a favorite porn film. Several guys I worked with that had once worked for the station told me that was a true story, but who knows. Nothing shocks or surprises me anymore.@@johnpinckney4979
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Statute of Limitations may have run out. But some of the people involved may still be alive! I found this out for myself a couple of months ago, when I encountered the "principal" of one of "my stories" at the memorial service for a Lutheran Pastor, of all places.
When I was in radio, I experienced three FCC inspections. At the first, I was the jock on-air at a Top-40/Paid Religion combo. The record I had on-air when it began was "One Of A Kind (Love Affair)" by The Spinners. The "original" version, with the line "Makes you want to love her. You just got to (deleted) her." The Inspector was not impressed. Next time, (Different station) the inspector was inspecting all of our licenses. Looking at one license, the inspector said "That operator's license is expired!" Our CE replied, "So, is the operator!" The idea of keeping the license of a deceased employee where it hung during his lifetime didn't go over well with the FCC guy. The third one (still at the second inspected station-when you're on the air for years with a "postcard on the wall", you probably get inspected more often), it was "Legal ID" time. Because of a unique format (Classical), the FCC informally allowed a "special ID" because of the AM and FM having the same call, but Licensed to different cities. We were allowed "Wxxx (City A), FM (City B)" The FCC guy asks "Any of you guys hams?" Our CE, Maintenance Guy, and I raised our hands. The FCC guy gave his callsign and asked, "Any of you DX'ers?" We were all Technicians. I was the closest to being a DX'er on six meters. The inspector said, "Isn't 'FM' the prefix for Martinique?" While the network news was still on, I excused myself to the men's room. Using the house phone unseen by the FCC guy, I called the studio and told the announcer to come out of the news cold with "Wxxx (City A) Wxxx-FM (City B)" and that I would explain later. Fortunately, she did and we were off the hook.
More unpleasant in a way was when I was involved in an interference complaint. In this case, a prominent TV station (Network O&O) was the victim. But that one got me an HF ham antenna where such were otherwise banned. And, is another story for perhaps another time... 73
Great stories! With all the rule changes and lack of personnel these days, more than likely the only time you’ll get a visit is for a complaint. But there may be that over zealous inspector who wants to “walk the beat.”
I do love the legal ID story. That’s a great recovery!
What version of the song was that? Must have missed that one, lol.
@@ku4uv The original release by Atlantic. Everybody in D.C. was playing it. Including ruler-straight WASH-FM when it was owned by Metromediocre.
@@ku4uv Just like Poker Face.
Merry Christmas everyone!
My father had to drive me to the FCC office in D.C. to take my test. Why? I was only 15. I started DX'ing AM and then SW. Until I heard (and QSL'ed) XEMO-860 (5KW om 860 from Tijuana) and 4VEH Cap Haitien, Haiti (9770 KHz with 2.5 KW.) from Alexandria, VA. Then, I started into TVDX. Bagged over 300 stations in the analog era. Gave me a career. Started a week after my 18th birthday because VA considered all broadcast transmitters "hazardous equipment"! Stops along the way included RKO General before my last stop, Cox, where I stayed almost twenty years until health compelled retirement. 73
Get off my lawn...wait.. I don't have a transmitter or logs, must have the wrong house
Hahahahahaha!
The FCC is generally not a fire breathing dragon. Our ham radio club did have an encounter with them and the FAA. A problem occured with one of our repeaters. It was being heard on ATC frequencies. I don't care which radio service you're in, that is a big No-no! Never interfere with air traffic control, ever. It was cold and wet, but we still went up that tower 500 ft to investigate. First I found out that it wasn't just aircraft frequencies we were being heard on, it was over most of the radio spectrum. I traced the problem to some frayed AC wiring. There was a 10 watt UHF transmitter up there beside our repeater's cabinet. Somebody wired it with zip cord in these awful conditions, full weather exposure. This essentially created a spark gap transmitter in this RF rich environment. It was mixing heavily with our repeater since they were next door neighbors plus everything else out there and coupling into the TV tower. One of the idiots with me actually grabbed those bare wires. I pulled the plug on that thing and came back on a nice warm day and rewired it with outdoor grade wiring. Both Federal agencies went away and left us alone after that. If you do get a notice from the FCC, if you will resolve the problem right away, they will usually play nice. If you decide to ignore them, then they will get nastier
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!!!🎁🎄
Man, we had so many things when I worked in small-market radio that could have gotten us into trouble with the FCC, it wasn't even funny. True story. One night, I'm working late at the station, running the board for one of our local college basketball games or something. I get a phone call from a guy claiming to be from the FCC. I ask him what can I help him with. It seems that our relay transmitter from the studio to the broadcast transmitter site had gone down. Rather than get a backup unit, our cheapskate station owner decided to just use a Marti unit that we used for remotes to transmit the signal back to the tower site. The supposed FCC inspector informed me that we were causing interference to another station's Marti transmitter that was using the same frequency. I tell the guy I was unaware of this, and that our owner was at his home, some 60 miles away. I told the guy I would go shut off the Marti transmitter if he wished, but then our station would be off the air, and we would just be broadcasting, "dead air." We didn't have a way to remotely shut down the transmitter site at this particular station. The guy told me to hold off in doing that. Not sure how that ever got resolved, I just told our station owner about it, and let him handle it. Then there was the time a guy at one of our sister stations let out a stream of profanity, not realizing he was on the air at the time. That incident made the local newspaper, but didn't get us an FCC fine. The guy didn't get fired, but I'm sure he got a severe sit-down meeting with the owner about wearing headphones, etc. Did I mention that when I started working in radio, I worked for about 2 years out of the 4 that I worked in radio during college, without a Radiotelephone Operator's license? It wasn't until someone mentioned something about their license that I started asking questions. The subject just never came up during my hiring process, which didn't surprise me, knowing our station owner. Our station owner just told me he had assumed that I had gotten my license through one of my college broadcasting classes, which I didn't. My dad had worked in radio about 20 years earlier, and he thought you no longer had to have a license to work in commercial radio. Yeah, he thought wrong. What else? Oh yeah, how about the fact that we weren't allowed to play the unedited version of Lou Reed's, "Take a Walk On The Wild Side," although a guy did it once. Before I worked for our local AM station, I know they weren't allowed to play Styx's, "Too Much Time On My Hands," until after 8:00 P.M. because it contained the word, "damn." Boy, have we come a long way since then!
I was running the audio board for an evening newscast one night about 25 years ago at WTVQ-TV, the local ABC affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky. We had a field reporter out with the remote truck, and our truck op had inadvertently left a mic on somewhere in the truck. For some reason, he let out a, "F--k!," at the top of his lungs. The guy didn't get fired, but our news director came into the control room with an odd look on his face, asking me what happened. We also had master control ops that never checked tower lights until our production manager called them out on it.
73,
DE KU4UV
I don't think you can work small market radio or TV for a year or two without having some good (and unpublishable) stories to share! 73
@@johnpinckney4979 I’m sure statute of limitations has expired by now…?
Let's hope.@@TheBroadcastEngineer
Our local FOX affiliate in Lexington is WDKY. WDKY went on the air back in 1985. There was an old urban legend that one night back in the mid 80's, when they were still just a podunk independent station, one of the master control ops decided to air a few minutes of a favorite porn film. Several guys I worked with that had once worked for the station told me that was a true story, but who knows. Nothing shocks or surprises me anymore.@@johnpinckney4979
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Statute of Limitations may have run out. But some of the people involved may still be alive! I found this out for myself a couple of months ago, when I encountered the "principal" of one of "my stories" at the memorial service for a Lutheran Pastor, of all places.
You scared? 😂😂😂😂😂