Actually, it’s more like it was blown out of analog. KNAZ-TV is the Flagstaff satellite of Gannet’s NBC KPNX-TV Phoenix. The station has been operating at reduced power since ice storms damaged its antenna. Although on the 3/17/09 declaration date Gannet said it would maintain analog operations through the deadline day of 6/12/09, its requesting permission to end immediately since the antenna failed completely.
That event took place 4/16/09. It’s still going strong in digital but the analog is totaled. The station has been keeping the FCC informed of the tenuous situation with the antenna, but noted that when it agreed to continue analog service all the way to 6/12/09 there was no “option provided in that form for any qualification or explanation about the possibility of an antenna failure prior to June 12, 2009.”
Meanwhile, business conditions forced it to drop its local news program and become a fulltime satellite of its Phoenix big sister. It cut off the local program 8/15/08. “As a free over-the-air television station, we depend on advertising support from the local community in order to pay the bills,” explained GM John Misner at the time. Unfortunately, we have not been able to generate that level of support during the decade that we have owned this television station,” he explained
RBR/TVBR observation: All of the contracts we see have a force majeur clause (at a previous publication, we believed force majeur incidents had two sources: the heavens and the office of the editor-in-chief). If this does not qualify under force majeur, we can’t imagine what would.
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