Restoring Over-the-Air TV in New York City After 9/11

摘要

As we observe the 20th anniversary of 9/11 this month, I want to focus on how New York City broadcasters recovered from the tragedy and their eventual move to One World Trade Center. My involvement with other broadcast engineers on the emergency restoration of over-the-air broadcasting at Alpine-with John Lyons at Durst and New York broadcasters on proving the viability of One WTC for TV broadcasting-and with construction of the first station on the air from One World Trade Center were certainly the highlights of my 50-year career in broadcast engineering. On that morning, I was getting ready to leave my townhouse for my office at Tele-mundo in Hialeah, Fla. when I got a call about a plane striking the World Trade Center. My first thought was it was a small plane, like one that crashed into it before but after turning on the TV and watching the news it became clear this was worse. Much worse. When I got to my office, after verifying that Gene Pfeiffer, the transmitter engineer at Tele-mundo's WNJU, had been delayed getting to the transmitter site that morning and was safe, I started looking for a site where we could get back on the air. The Alpine Tower in Alpine, N.Y. seemed like the best choice and I soon found out other broadcasters had the same idea.