KDEB recovering from tower collapse

A mass of mangled steel and cable in Fordland is unidentifiable as a television broadcast tower.

The 35-year-old, 1,600-foot tower, which is owned by Am-erican Tower Corp. and was leased by KDEB-TV Fox 27, fell victim to heavy ice accumulation Nov. 30.

Since the collapse, KDEB has been scrambling to send its signal to television viewers and is now reaching only 45 percent of its coverage area.

"Everyone knows there's an incredible obligation here," said station manager Kemp Nichol. "We're trying to get back whole again."

To that end, a temporary an-tenna was immediately placed on another tower the same tower used by KOLR, KSPR and Ozarks Public Television which is located in Fordland near the crash site.

The station has gradually increased the power of its signal, first reaching 18 percent, then 26 percent and now nearly half of its audience.

It will probably remain at that level until Feb. 1, the deadline the station has set to reach full power.

Initial costs

KDEB leased space on the tower from American Tower Corp., a Boston-based company with about 14,000 towers across North America and several in Springfield, Nichol said. So the station's initial costs are for replacement of its three broadcasting components that sat on the tower: the transmitter, the antenna and the transmission line.

"Those three pieces of equipment were totaled in the fall," Nichol said.

The Wednesday after the disaster, a purchase agreement was signed for the new equipment, which Nichol said will cost well in excess of $1 million. The equipment won't be received and operational until Feb. 1.

"Everything's on target to get there," added Mark Gordon, Fox general sales manager. "Each time you talk to a manufacturer, each time you talk to tower crews, you get definitive dates from them. ... This is the timeline we're working with."

Timing is especially important because of the Feb. 3 Super Bowl. The event looms large for many Fox 27 football viewers.

"Around this area, there are a lot of expectations its going to be the Rams in it," Gordon said. "So it's really important ... that we cover 100 percent (of the coverage area), and we feel very confident in the Feb. 1 deadline."

Advertising rebates

While the nights and Sunday afternoons have been long for the Fox audience, they aren't the only ones at a loss.

The station's commercial advertising has been hard hit. Since contracts cannot be fulfilled to 100 percent of the paid Springfield market, which Gordon said covers 32 counties, rebates will be given to clients based on the percentage of the coverage area reached.

"The advertising is absolutely affected," Gordon said. "What we have done is researched where our signal is going," and then determined the percentage of the original coverage area reached. All advertisers have been informed of these percentages "and we will reduce their invoices at the end of the month, based upon those dollars," he added.

Most affected, he said, have been the larger, national clients that aim to reach a vast audience. Two such advertisers have actually pulled out, but Gordon declined to name them.

Locally, clients are a little more forgiving and understanding, he said.

"The local advertisers are seeing this as an opportunity to get more commercial time," he said. "What they're doing is reinvesting the money back on our station. Yes, we're seeing a decline in revenues," but "we haven't seen clients leave our station, outside the two exceptions.

"They've been understanding, and they're supportive of us getting back up to speed as fast as possible," Gordon added. "What we're trying to do is just be very honest and truthful with them."

Natural disaster

Nichol called the tower collapse an "act of God" of "incredible violence" that occurred when ice collected over-night on the tower's stabilizing guy wires. When the ice began to melt, the weight was unevenly distributed.

"It was not (just) the weight of the ice that brought the tower down, it was the way it melted," Gordon said. "It melted on the one side and threw it out of balance. The force (with which) the tower hit the ground and the damage it did is just phenomenal. There are pieces of the tower buried seven feet in the ground."

He said engineers from American Tower and Kline Iron & Steel Co., the tower's manufacturer, estimated that there were pieces of ice eight inches in diameter that left ravines almost one-foot wide in the ground.

Others affected

Others affected by the disaster were radio station KWFC and Webster Elec-tric Cooperative.

The collapse severed a Webster Electric power line that ran to KWFC's nearby tower, putting the station off air and leaving about 50 nearby homes without power, according to Tom Houston, special projects coordinator for Webster.

Houston said power was back on about six hours after the crash. The electric company had to install and reroute new lines to the KWFC tower, but Gary Longstaff, KWFC's general manager, said the station did not go back on air until Monday morning because its transmitter blew when it attempted to power up.

According to Longstaff, this caused $3,000 to $4,000 in repair expenses and lost revenue from underwriters and na-tional programmers who had already paid for weekend air-time.

Webster's expenses are still being determined, Houston said, and they will cover added labor, lost equipment and the cost of two contract crews.

Safety net

Helping to ease the pain of the expenses suffered, Gordon said, is KDEB's business interruption insurance.

"The idea of business interruption insurance ... is to put you back to where you would have been had this not happen," he said. "It's a great comfort. We have the resources to be able to do this. The key thing is to get back. The only goal ... is trying to get the service back to the folks that view us as fast as we possibly can."

Looking ahead

According to Doug Aube, an attorney with American Tower, the company is waiting until Fox is at full power to fully assess its next move.

"Right now, all our efforts are going towards making sure Fox 27 is up and running at full power" on the temporary location, Aube said. "Once they are up and running, we will revisit the other tower that the incident happened to and make the economic decision of whether we're going to move forward or not. We just try to take care of our clients first and then decide how to go from there."

Aube said a new tower of that size would cost about $3 million. He said American Tower purchased the towers from Quorum Broadcasting about six months ago.