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Sunday, May 29, 2011

KTRK 13's 10pm news hijacked by technical problems


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Wouldn't you know it...things break on holiday weekends. KTRK 13's usual Eyewitness News at 10pm was delayed a full hour Saturday night because of 'gremlins' in the equipment. Here is more from the KTRK 13 twitter account:

Wondering where the 10pm news is? We're experiencing technical difficulties. Stand by & we'll have the news up soon! Thx for your patience.

The anchors must have been waiting in the studio for a longtime for the problem to be fixed. At least according to a tweet from anchor Adela Uchida:

Tom and I are sitting in the studio, thinking we will be able to start the news at 11- just 6,7 minutes. Stay with us...

Forget the late news, the 'later' news finally came on around 11pm.

Hey guess what... THE NEWS IS ON!

TV stations having technical troubles is nothing new. I remember years ago when I worked at KTRK, the audio board went out right before the 10pm news. The production crew still got the news on anyway. A few months ago, KTRK didn't have any audio in its 4pm newscast for the first 20 minutes or so. That also happened to a 9pm newscast I served as a reporter on for KIAH 39.  At least in channel 13's case, the audience apparently noticed and sent warm wishes to the station on Facebook.

So what did KTRK run instead of the news while things were being repaired? Cold Case...which normally airs after the newscast on Saturday nights. Many Houston viewers probably wanted to call the HPD cold case unit when tuning in and not seeing anchors Tom Abrahams, Uchida, meteorologist David Tillman and sports anchor Tim Melton.

Glad to see @ktrkhouston has a human voice tweeting on it again. Not sure that has happened much since I left in 2009. CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here