Not nearly as romantic as Andy’s story, but here is a positive one.

 

Many many moons ago (even a few more moons before I was chief at WDHA), I was chief at WFME (owned by Family Radio, you know, Mr. Camping, the guy that said the world was going to end last May). The station was located in West Orange, New Jersey, so we had a local 201 area code number, but since we had many listeners in New York, we also had a foreign exchange number in the 212 area code so our New York listeners could call the station and not have it be a long distance call. The problem was the New York people would call the Jersey number, not the New York number, from the 212 area code, and would bother the poor person that had that number in the 212 area code no end. It was especially troublesome during our semi annual beg-a-thons (WFME was, and still is a listener supported station) when people would call in their pledges.

 

I finally stumbled upon the idea that if we could get the same number in both area codes, our problem would be solved. I called our New Jersey Bell account exec (who’s name is long forgotten), and asked him if he could see if he could find a number for us in our local 201-736 exchange, and the same number in the 212 area code. The wrinkle was that the New Jersey number had to be able to accommodate a 10 line hunt group, and the New York number had to accommodate a 5 line hunt group, for our beg-a-thons. He did the research, and found a grand total of two numbers that met our criteria. One was the main number of some business in the City, so there was no way we were going to get that number. The other number was a secondary line for some other business, so he thought he at least had a shot at that one. He called the business, and was informed that to relinquish the number would require the approval of their chief operator, who was on vacation. He had to move fast, because if any of the numbers in either hunt group were assigned before we grabbed them, the whole plan fell apart. He was able to talk the person he spoke to out of the chief operator’s home phone number, and he called her at home. She agreed to relinquish the number; all we had to do was pay for the installation of a replacement number, which we did. The order was placed, and we shortly had the same number in both the 201 and 212 area codes.

 

After everything was in place, I wrote a letter to our account exec’s boss basically praising him no end for jumping through all the hoops it took to get this done. His boss called me a few days later, almost speechless. He said in all the years he had worked for the phone company, this was the first time any one had written a letter thanking him for something he or one of his people had done.

 

Alan

 

 

What, no positive telco stories?   OK, I will tell one.

A very junior broadcast engineer working in the Buffalo market was quite enthralled with a young lady from NYC.  Unfortunately, that young lady had gone home for summer break.   Engineer figured he would overnight airplane tickets to the young lady, so she could come visit one weekend.   However, said engineer didn't really think things through before he sent the envelope.  You see, he was also moving at the same time, and had just placed the order to switch his POTS line from old to new apartment.   This of course presented a real crisis, as how would the young lady call to say she was willing to make the trip?  

Engineer, having reason to chat with telco for remote lines etc, had contact numbers for some of the frames.  So, in desperation, engineer rang up the telephone company folks he routinely dealt with, even though they weren't in the same geographic area of the city.  The repair worker that he reached immediately grasped the gravity of the situation, spoke to his coworkers, and engineer's POTS line was moved to his new apartment in a matter of a few hours.   Later that night, the phone rang, and it was the young lady on the other end.

We have been married thirty years.

Andy




On Thu, 2012-03-08 at 08:17 -0700, Parnau, Alan W wrote:

I’ve been reading this thread with much amusement, and must tell a story of my own. Many moons ago when I was Chief at WDHA, the manager decided he wanted “music on hold”, so that people could listen to the station while waiting. So, I order up the service. When the installer arrived, I showed him to the basement and told him to just leave me block where I would tie the audio in later. I went back to the AM station (WMTR) to do something else, and got a call that we had lost one channel on WDHA, and we were in mono (we only 15 KC Telco lines to the transmitter). So I go back up to the FM and into the basement to see if audio was leaving the building. I came upon the “music on hold” installer, and he told me he saved me a job, he already tied the audio into the “music on hold”. You guessed it; he took the audio off one side of the 15 KC stereo pair to feed the music on hold. I was not pleased.

 

Alan

 

---

From: Tom Ray [mailto:tomray@PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 10:00 AM
To: sbe15
Subject: [sbe15ny] RE: NY NWS station off air??

 

I sent letters to each member of the Board of Directors of Verizon for continuing ISDN issues we had here.  The guy in charge of repair called me in somewhat of a huff a couple of days later - while we were chatting, he started looking over the repair records then blurted out "Holy S###!!!! This is costing us real money to keep sending people out!"  Next day there were 10 Verizonites on site....all problems solved within two days.  Funny how that works.

 

When I worked in Hartford, the phone company needed to replace the 66 blocks on the building mainframe - they were 25 years old and literally were falling apart because the plastic had dried out - every time they hit any block with an impact tool, a chunk would fly off.  We had a bunch of old circuits, some not identified at either end.  So, since we had a dedicated 50 pair cable from the basement, I identified - and tagged! - every pair in use by an unidentified circuit at their blocks in the basement.  A week later, I hear a network news actuality on the air driving in that has a huge hum on it.  I get in to find all lines back from the transmitter (where the sat dish was) humming (yes, we had hum on the air all night and the overnight person didn't find that to be a problem!).  So I marched down to the basement where two phone company types were working, and there, on our block, all the circuits humming had one side lifted (all were tagged).  So I started laying into them - what about the tags THEY saw me put on and approved of my labeling the other day - and what about come up and ask me before they lift anything didn't they understand?  "Uhhh - - we didn't know what those circuits were, but figured if we lifted one side, someone would complain about the hum".  Sometimes I think you need to fail an IQ test before you can work for telco.....

 

TR

 

 

 

 

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 9:45 AM, Marshall, George <GeorgeMarshall@PROTECTED> wrote:

Used that once after a prolonged issue with a PRI on a T1.  Technicians and field managers showed up at the site and asked me “What the heck did you do?  You wouldn’t believe the hornets’ nest you’ve stirred up!”  Amazingly, the problem that had dragged on for a month was fixed in a matter of hours after that phone call.  And all I did was leave a message J

 

George Marshall - CBRE

Chief Engineer - WHTZ-FM / Z100

Playout Systems Supervisor

Clear Channel Radio - NYC

PH  (212) 549-0610

 

From: David K. Bialik [mailto:dkbialik@PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 6:46 PM
To: sbe15
Cc: sbe15
Subject: [sbe15ny] RE: NY NWS station off air??

 

Presidential hotline used to expedite all telco.

David K. Bialik

(845)634-6595

 

On Mar 7, 2012, at 6:28 PM, "mkluger1@PROTECTED" <mkluger1@PROTECTED> wrote:

True story...I swear:

 

When I took over my current job, we did not have a list of our circuit numbers and what the far end locations were.  I knew that we had a number of circuits that we were the customer on, and a number of circuits that the party at the other end was the customer on, and I could get the circuit numbers from the tags in the frame room, but i had no way to match up which circuit number correstponded to which far end location.  So, I decided to make a list of all of the circuit numbers, and then call Verizon and ask them to tell me the far end location of each circuit number.

 

They were more than happy to give me this information for the circuits that we were the customer on.  However, when we got to any circuits that the person at the far end was the customer, they said that they could not give me any information without the customer's permission.  When I asked how else I can find out who the circuit belongs to, they said (I'm not kidding here) that for each circuit that I need to know who the customer is, I need to have the customer send a letter giving the circuit number and authorizing Verizon to release the information to me.  I could not seem to get them to comprehend that in order to get the customer to send a letter, I need to know who the customer is, and that if I had the information to match each circuit number to the customer, I wouldn't need to ask Verizon to tell me who the customer was.

 

Mike

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Tom Ray <tomray@PROTECTED>
To: "sbe15" <members@PROTECTED>
Subject: [sbe15ny] RE: NY NWS station off air??
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:20:06 -0700

 

I'm sorry.....that circuit doesn't exist.....

 

 

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:53 PM, <jeffsmith@PROTECTED> wrote:

 

Maybe longer...it will take that long for VZ to find the old circuit info before a ticket can go in! :)

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

---

From:Tom Ray <tomray@PROTECTED>

Date:Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:37:08 -0700

To:sbe15<members@PROTECTED>

ReplyTo:"sbe15" <members@PROTECTED>

Subject:[sbe15ny] RE: NY NWS station off air??

 

 

OK.  So what you're saying is that it will be off the air at least 3 months?  :o)  Verizon.  No Progress Here Today.

 

 

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:31 PM, mkluger1@PROTECTED <mkluger1@PROTECTED> wrote:

 

I spoke with NWS staff about the outage at around 10:30 this morning.  They told me that the circuit to their transmitter is down.  They have reported it to telco and are awaiting repair.

 

Mike

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Tom Ray <tomray@PROTECTED>
To: "sbe15" <members@PROTECTED>
Subject: [sbe15ny] RE: NY NWS station off air??
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:47:06 -0700

 

Wonder if it's maintenance or the solar activity?

 

 

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Jeff Smith <jeffsmith@PROTECTED> wrote:


__

Looks like it...not getting it here either.

Jeff




-----Original Message-----
From: Stu Engelke [mailto:audiotoantenna@PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 12:14 PM
To: sbe15
Subject: [sbe15ny] NY NWS station off air??


__

I'm not getting 162.55 on either of my receivers.
Stu

--
Stu Engelke



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