This week’s earthquake didn’t produce immediate reports of big structural issues at broadcast stations. But local engineers and managers have been checking facilities to be sure.
Greater Media — which on Tuesday evacuated its Philly offices briefly as a precaution — subsequently discovered that a floor slab at its New Brunswick, N.J., studios apparently had sustained a crack.
The building serves WCTC(AM) and WMGQ(FM). Company engineering exec Milford Smith tells Radio World that local engineers are investigating that further.
Smitty himself was having lunch Tuesday on a waterside deck at the Jersey shore when the quake hit. “We at first thought it was wave action from the adjacent inlet causing the deck to sway back and forth. We soon found out otherwise!”
Steve Davis,senior VP of engineering and capital management for Clear Channel Radio, said Thursday that the company’s facilities had “suffered no real damage” but that employees were checking to confirm the structural soundness of some of its owned buildings.
Radio World will share word of any other subsequent reports of broadcast infrastructure consequences from what we might call the “Big Virginia Rattle.”
