Ice and Winds Topple S.C. TV Tower

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published

CBS affiliate WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, S.C. lost both its main and backup broadcast towers last Sunday night due to ice and high winds at its mountaintop transmitter site. An article on the WSPA web site shows the tower on the ground. The station said one of the main towers collapsed, hitting the backup tower as it fell. The station is streaming newscasts on the Web and programming via digital ancillary channel 62.2 on sister station WYCW, which is licensed to Ashville, N.C.

"An accumulation of two inches of ice, winds speeds gusting at 60 miles an hour, pretty much caused our tower to collapse," said WSPA-TV engineer Charlie Wofford. "It was quite a thing to see our antenna laid out in the woods."

Wofford said a temporary antenna has been ordered and he hoped that the station could be back on the air within a few weeks or sooner.

"We have structural engineers up there to determine if we can mount a temporary antenna on what is still standing," Wofford said.

Doug Lung
Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack. A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.