While waiting for the start of the 11 PM news with the anchors and set personal in position waiting for the start time, when a high intensity light bulb explodes, something that does happen quite frequently in a television studio, and catches a stage curtain on fire (something that doesn't happen). Within 30 seconds the rear of the news set is in flames and the fire alarm is going off. The building is evacuated and FDNY is called and begins to put out the fire that has now smoked up the building pretty good and has now forced WABC TV off the air for the next several hours.
It is interesting to me that after 9/11, WABC wasn't prepared to stay on the air. Since WABC lost their transmitter site on the World Trade Center, you would think they would have a plan in place to handle routine emergencies, like a fire. We have a saying at work, "We never close, period." Unless the apocolypse hits, we have plans that will keep us on the air, no matter what. FOX has spend lots of money to be sure that we can stay on no matter what. We may not have regular programming on, but we will still be sending a signal out. For at least two hours, WABC had either dead air or color bars on the air. Not good. I would not want to be the managers of WABC today having to answer to the "mouse" suits. New York being the number one market in the country, the amount of money lost is in the tens of millions. A fire shouldn't take you off if you have the proper backups in place.
I feel sorry for those guys in the trenches who had to pull it all together to get back on the air, it was a long night to get things in some kind of shape to get their morning news up on time and a big round of applause and congrats for pulling that off because that ain't easy, I am here to tell you. To the managers, I hope you got your resumes current, you might need them.
Video is here -> http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5345032
Video is here -> http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5345032
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