Four Boston stations returned to the air this afternoon, following an antenna malfunction that occurred on Sunday night.
CBS-owned WBZ, and its MyNetworkTV sister station WSBK, ABC-affiliate WCVB, and PBS station WGBX were all knocked off the air around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday after a technical malfunction occurred at the broadcast tower they all share.
WCVB was able to quickly switch to an auxiliary antenna, and the station has been broadcasting at reduced power since Sunday night.
In order to return all of the stations to the air, technicians moved their signals to the tower of PBS station WGBH and transferred WGBH’s programming to WCVB’s auxiliary antenna.
The relocation will allow for permanent repairs to be made to the stations’ tower.
WBZ’s director of communications released the following statement this afternoon:
We are pleased to report that WBZ-TV and myTV38 are once again broadcasting over the air. Technicians were successful in identifying the problem, and service has been restored to viewers who receive the stations through over the air broadcast transmission. Thanks are due in large part to the cooperation of WGBH and WCVB for temporarily relocating the affected stations to their antennas so that every station can return to broadcasting over the air while permanent repairs are made. We thank viewers for their patience while we were resolving the problem, and we are pleased to be back on the air.
As the Boston Globe points out, the outage did not affect the majority of Boston viewers since 98 percent of the market uses cable and satellite to watch the stations.
[WBZ, WCVB, Boston Globe]