KTEN Still Without Local News After Weekend Lightning Strike

By Kevin Eck 

Nearly one week after its tower was hit by a lightning strike, KTEN is still unable to air its local news.

Late Saturday night, the NBC affiliate for Sherman-Ada, TX, as well as its ABC and CW digital feeds were knocked off the air following a lighting strike to the station’s tower. KTEN general manager Anthony Maisel told TVSpy the strike measured 390 kiloamps.  For perspective he said, “a strike on a home is five amps, so this was a monster.”

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“It was about midnight Saturday night that I received a call from Master Control that we had suffered  a lightning strike at the station,” said chief engineer Danny Allen. “He explained it as ‘something flying across master control’ it turned out to be an equipment panel that actually was blown off.”

The station had to scrap plans to begin airing its news tonight at 6:00 p.m. after more damage was discovered.

The network feeds were restored to local cable, DirecTV and Dish network by Monday afternoon allowing those viewers to watch “Dancing with the Stars” on ABC and “The Voice” on NBC. But KTEN was still unable to broadcast its local signal, including its news and syndicated shows like “Wheel of Fortune.”

Said Maisel, “The hit was so bad, in all my years I haven’t seen anything like this and I’ll say in all my years I have never seen a group of engineers work so hard to get us back up.”

[TVNewsCheck]

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