WEAO/49 Outage

UPDATE 4/16/11 10:45 AM: Here’s the update from Western Reserve PBS’ Facebook page:

WEAO outage update: Work on the technical problem is delayed until Monday morning due to high winds and rain. Most cable subscribers are getting Western Reserve PBS now, thanks to cable systems switching over to our WNEO signal.

And as the station explains it, there’s a very good reason that the weather is delaying plans to fix the problem:

The problem appears to involve an 800-ft. transmission line that begins at the station’s Copley transmitter and runs up the transmission tower to its antenna.

A hat tip to Akron Beacon Journal pop culture columnist and OMW reader Rich Heldenfels for that last quote.

Here at the OMW World Headquarters, on the former Adelphia/Cuyahoga Valley system now part of the TWC empire, WNEO’s volume on analog 9 is a bit distorted.

The subchannels carried in this end of the TWC system are fine. The former Adelphia systems do not carry WEAO/49.1, the HD version of the main signal, and only carry the downconverted analog 9 channel.

The original update is below:

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Western Reserve PBS’ WEAO/49 Akron has been off the air since last night, due to a problem at the station’s Copley transmitter facility.

Engineers are working on the situation right now, and they hope to return the station to the airwaves soon.

Being a two-station operation has come in handy for Western Reserve PBS. The pubcaster has returned to Cleveland/Akron-market Time Warner Cable systems using a feed from WNEO/45 Alliance, the station’s Youngstown market facility…