Small market TV can be rough at times. But things have probably never been this difficult for the news staff at Pappas Telecasting-owned KHGI (NTV) in Kearney.An ice storm last Friday and Saturday that left behind tens of millions of dollars in damage to power poles and transmission lines in central Nebraska knocked out power to the station Saturday. Generators are running nonstop to keep the station on the air but staffers have had to deal with a bigger problem - falling ice.
The station's tower, which stands adjacent to the newsroom building, began shedding chunks of ice when temperatures first rose above freezing Sunday afternoon. Thursday, station engineers estimated there are more than 50 holes in the roof, with the newsroom suffering the most significant damage.
The newsroom is now off-limits and newscasts are originating out of the station's Grand Island Bureau, more than 50 miles away.
"Our concern, first and foremost, is for the physical well being for all our employees, including the subcontractors and people we have working to assist us," NTV General Manager Vincent Barresi told the Kearney Hub newspaper.
Staying safe meant evacuating the newsroom on Tuesday after a huge chunk of ice tore through the ceiling of news director Mark Baumert's office. Computers were moved out of the newsroom into a conference room and the station's lobby. While newscasts were still being delivered from the news set at that time, anchors wore hard hards on the air to protect themselves against the threat of more falling ice.
"It's an unholy mess," said Sara Linner, executive producer of new media at NTV. "They're plugging along as well as they can."
Linner said trash cans litter the building, collecting water that is leaking through the ceiling. Getting to and from the station is difficult since fallen power lines have closed the main road (Highway 44) from Kearney, doubling the 15-mile, one-way trip.
"We can't edit any tape, we can't access national video, our sound board is fried, we can't run supers and we can't make full page graphics except through the weather computer," she said.
A new computer Linner used to post news to the station's website was ruined by water and the fate of the station's archive tapes - which were also soaked - is still not known, she said.
Linner said the station has been fortunate that viewers have posted news and photos to the "Community Correspondent" section of the website. Nearly 50 photos a day have been e-mailed in and posted online.
"They're constantly sending in photos, even though they are dealing with their own hardships," Linner said. "We can't put them on the air like we normally would do, but they are online for everyone to see."
With one to three inches of snow forecast for Kearney today, it might get worse before it gets better.
"We'll deal with it," Linner said.
3 comments:
I feel for the poor news-lings. How typical for a Pappas-owned station to be "out in the cold" when it comes to proper equipment. They should just give up doing news altogether and burn down all of their stations and save the money and let those poor people out of their hellish working environments. Best wishes to Kearney...
I feel for all of them out there, but it was a matter of time before that building took a hit from the environment, whether it be this or a tornado. Afterall part of their building was once a barn.
Thanks for thee post
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