![]() WCBS kept a backup facility at the Empire State Building so was able to get back on the air immediately from that location.Īlpine wasn’t the ultimate solution. At Alpine, five stations-WNBC, WABC, WPIX, WNET and WNJU-were back on the air just weeks after the loss of the World Trade Center. Daily meetings solved problems like where to put the antennas, power availability, how to fit the cooling systems on the roof, and other mundane but necessary issues to make sure the facility performed as well as it could.Īnyone who has built a TV transmission facility knows how long it takes. Telemundo’s station, WNJU, was fortunate because we had an IOT transmitter in storage in Brooklyn that was supposed to have been installed at the World Trade Center. Transmitter manufacturers found transmitters and antenna manufacturers-notably Dielectric-used material they had on hand to fabricate antennas.Ĭustomers in other parts of the country accepted delayed deliveries in order to prioritize getting New York broadcasters back on the air. When there wasn’t enough power at the site for all the transmitters, GE-which owned NBC at the time-rolled in generators with UPS in trailers until the utility company could bring in more power. Getting TV back on the air was one small way to honor those people.Īt Alpine, equipment that normally took months to deliver showed up in a week or two. What made the experience more poignant is that most of the people working at the site had lost friends on 9/11. Just remembering those people and the energy there still chokes me up a bit 20 years later. When I arrived, what I found was the most amazing band of people-engineers, contractors, manufacturers, electricians, tower crews, plumbers-all working together with a single purpose to get broadcasters back on the air. ![]() Remember this was analog TV, so we had waveform monitors, stereo generators, distribution amplifiers, video and audio processing gear and patchbays. I also called vendors to see what equipment was available and determine how quickly they could get it to the site. ![]() seemed like the best choice and I soon found out other broadcasters had the same idea.Ĭharles Sackermann and his engineers at Alpine Tower Company were working on plans to put broadcasters in a building next to the famous tower. When I got to my office, after verifying that Gene Pfeiffer, the transmitter engineer at Telemundo’s WNJU, had been delayed getting to the transmitter site that morning and was safe, I started looking for a site where we could get back on the air. My first thought was it was a small plane, like one that crashed into it before but after turning on the TV and watching the news it became clear this was worse. when I got a call about a plane striking the World Trade Center. On that morning, I was getting ready to leave my townhouse for my office at Telemundo in Hialeah, Fla.
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