RBR-TVBR First:
At about 3:45 PM PT, all of San Diego County, CA, southern Orange County, CA, parts of Western AZ and much of Baja California Norte, Mexico lost power. The blackout’s cause is uncertain, but some reports say a major cable connecting AZ and CA could have been disrupted/tripped offline due to a number of factors. Dave Schutz, President of Hoffman-Schutz Media Capital in San Diego, gave RBR-TVBR a run-down at 6:40 PM PT of what radio stations were on, and which were off, in San Diego:
“Clear Channel and [Midwest Television’s News-Talk] KFMB-A/FM are the only local, live stations. There is not a single Spanish-language station in the county—AM or FM—[that had coverage of the event when I tuned in]. Clear Channel is playing a common feed on its stations and interestingly, has hooked up with [non-comm/NPR] KPBS-FM. Actually, with our severe fires three years ago, KPBS became the dominant news-talk station breaking local news. It also had the only 24/7 radio news department, Anyway, they are off the air right now but are streaming.”
He adds, “They’ve teamed up with Clear Channel and are apparently at the Clear Channel studios. CBS Radio is off the air entirely; Lincoln Financial Media is running just recorded music. The Mexican stations in Tijuana are all broadcasting with generators, but are just running recorded music.”
At 7:30 PM PT, the SD airport was getting power back, but not much else. Some lights are on in Tijuana.
Update: Peter Moore, SVP/Western Regional Manager, Univision Radio, tells RBR-TVBR many of the Tijuana stations did go off the air and had trouble getting back on (although by evening most were back on). His KLQV-FM and KLNV-FM lost signal for less than one-minute and were back on the air right away: “We were live and local through midnight on both stations (on KLQV we carry a syndicated show from 7pm-midnight, but last we brought in a live operator to go live in breaks each hour to update our listeners). Right after the power went out, we immediately connected with KBNT-TV, the Univision-Affiliate in San Diego, with whom we have an ongoing news relationship. Each weekday we air news updates in the afternoon from them at 4:50pm and 5:50pm. Yesterday, we didn’t wait until the normal break time. As soon as they had verified information about the power outage, we went on the air with it. We were monitoring the English-language TV stations through the afternoon, and relaying information from them to our listeners. We reached out to SDG&E to get more information, but like all media, English and Spanish, we couldn’t get anything from SDG&E until they finally did a news conference later in the afternoon. We relayed what was announced by them to our listeners at that time. From 7pm to 12 midnight, we stayed live on both stations to relay the SDG&E tweets sent out to communicate to the community when to expect their power back.”
Here is David’s full list:
Local live English list:
KOGO-AM Clear Channel
KFMB AM/FM Midwest Television
KMYI-FM Clear Channel
KGB-FM Clear Channel
On but no local:
KSON-FM Lincoln Financial
KLQV-FM (Univision)
Off air:
KBZT-FM Lincoln Financial
KYXY-FM CBS
KIFM-FM Lincoln Financial
KSCF-FM CBS
KIOZ-FM Clear Channel
KPBS FM San Diego State U.
