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KHOU Building Flooded


Weeters

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Just to be clear, self insurance doesn't mean no insurance. Self insurance usually means a company sets aside funds to cover losses to a certain amount. Usually $100,000 to $1,000,000. Amounts over that are covered by mega policies. The self insurance option is like a huge deductible, to keep huge casualty premiums in line. State laws still require companies who self insure to have backing from real insurance carriers. While there could be a long wait for any kind of insurance payout, Tegna has deep pockets and lots of credit lines to finance whatever they need to do in the interim. Also, Tegna will be able to claim any losses from the storm to offset corporate taxes, possibly over a period of years.

 

Something that could work in KHOU's favor in re-building is that Harris County has no zoning laws. They'll be able to build anywhere they want without having to deal with zoning approval or variances. All they'll need is the property and building permits.

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Just to be clear, self insurance doesn't mean no insurance. Self insurance usually means a company sets aside funds to cover losses to a certain amount. Usually $100,000 to $1,000,000. Amounts over that are covered by mega policies. The self insurance option is like a huge deductible, to keep huge casualty premiums in line. State laws still require companies who self insure to have backing from real insurance carriers. While there could be a long wait for any kind of insurance payout, Tegna has deep pockets and lots of credit lines to finance whatever they need to do in the interim. Also, Tegna will be able to claim any losses from the storm to offset corporate taxes, possibly over a period of years.

 

Something that could work in KHOU's favor in re-building is that Harris County has no zoning laws. They'll be able to build anywhere they want without having to deal with zoning approval or variances. All they'll need is the property and building permits.

 

Thanks for clarifying the self insurance deal..

 

This issue (zoning) WILL come up for discussion in the confines of Houston...and very soon.

 

 

"Is it time to enact some zoning laws in the city?"

 

Plenty of people think it's ass backwards to run an international city without ANY zoning. it's gonna be a clean slate...but it's a discussion for another forum all together.

 

The rebuilding process should be pretty interesting.

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I feel so bad for the KHOU staff. It must be very stressful/exhausting covering a disaster like this while you worry about your OWN home, and now, these people had to move a TV station so they wouldn't be trapped. Even though I feel bad for them. whose dumb idea was it to put a TV station in a flood/hurricane prone area next to a major bayou?

That would have been the Whitney Corporation, who moved what had been KGUL/Galveston to Houston as KHOU in 1959. They had been at the Allen Parkway studios since 1960.

 

Why didn't they move? A variety of reasons. Land availability/affordability to move elsewhere - assuming it had ever been brought up - and simple complacency being at the top of the list. This could be second guessed until the cows come home.

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What's going on at this point? It sounds like the only thing they have to work with for the web feed is a weather tracker vehicle, and all they have is a camera on the roof and a microphone in the vehicle.

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That would have been the Whitney Corporation, who moved what had been KGUL/Galveston to Houston as KHOU in 1959. They had been at the Allen Parkway studios since 1960.

 

Why didn't they move? A variety of reasons. Land availability/affordability to move elsewhere - assuming it had ever been brought up - and simple complacency being at the top of the list. This could be second guessed until the cows come home.

That would be correct. And in 1960 that was 30 years after the construction of the reservoirs (Addicks and Barker) which was a main flood control deal. IN fact these two reservoirs plus other preventative measures up until now over the lifetime has saved Houston over $16M a year in annual flood damages. Apparently, that bayou used to cause a lot more flash floods before the reservoirs got built.

 

I want everyone to understand that as of now..Buffalo Bayou is at 36.8' where major flood stage is expected to rise still. The station is under 4-5' of water right now. Just to give everyone an idea, its 17' for there to be a warning or action. So the bayou is very deep..and a lot of others are the same way.

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Is KHOU's coverage coming out of KUSA right now? Also are they going through an actual control room, or some other improvised setup? The graphics look odd with all that Arial...

 

Probably some kind of Tri-Caster or other 'off-the-shelf' option with the basics of the Gannett/Tegna package loaded in, possibly something able to be controlled at the KUHT facility so that the other facilities can focus on master control without having to load in GFX.

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Probably some kind of Tri-Caster or other 'off-the-shelf' option with the basics of the Gannett/Tegna package loaded in, possibly something able to be controlled at the KUHT facility so that the other facilities can focus on master control without having to load in GFX.

 

Either they got tricaster or something else as now its back to KHOU 11 HD Doppler. I would assume the wx computers are still down and are being ran somewhere else.

 

They definitely are doing graphics locally -- you can tell by the basic font (Arial?) being used on the L3

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They definitely are doing graphics locally -- you can tell by the basic font (Arial?) being used on the L3

 

Maybe the weather system is being fed from another Tegna station via satellite or other means (KUSA? WFAA? elsewhere?) and KHOU can probably Remote Desktop or Teamviewer into that workstation from Houston...

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the crummy graphics came with the switch to KUSA thismorning... there was discussion on the raw stream about having to "switch satellites" at the transmitter... maybe Denver has a Tricaster, and WFAA does not... would explain why WFAA could not split away when their news was on...

 

the gfx were NOT on the raw stream after the "switch"... and the raw studio feed didn't have packages or wx graphics... which leaves kusa as the only place they could have been coming from.

 

wx gfx... could be a remote feed over ip, could be a box that WSI flew out... if they put it on the first flight to san antonio (where other nets are flying crew and equipment to) it's possible they got it early afternoon and up in that timeframe...

 

not 100% on this but i THINK WSI can run with only two machines ("max" box that outputs graphics and "prism" box that stores data?) and they use off-the-shelf HP workstations for all their equipment. vendors fly things out all the time so it's not unheard of...

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Are any of the other Big 4 Houston stations helping out? I still haven't seen any reports from them about KHOU (also haven't checked since last night).

 

Not at the moment..KRIV did mention them on their twitter feed, but noone else

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The YouTube feed is holding up well. I noticed they had full 7 day forecast graphic. Just a few moments ago was on air live report and toss back to studios then played American Red Cross spot. Followed by telephone number graphic complete with "This is Home" music. 20170828_214747.thumb.jpg.e0aad815975fe0930c5c3502602be222.jpg

20170828_213217.thumb.jpg.47aac688417452401a4e594fe2ac1e32.jpg

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the crummy graphics came with the switch to KUSA thismorning... there was discussion on the raw stream about having to "switch satellites" at the transmitter... maybe Denver has a Tricaster, and WFAA does not... would explain why WFAA could not split away when their news was on...

 

the gfx were NOT on the raw stream after the "switch"... and the raw studio feed didn't have packages or wx graphics... which leaves kusa as the only place they could have been coming from.

 

wx gfx... could be a remote feed over ip, could be a box that WSI flew out... if they put it on the first flight to san antonio (where other nets are flying crew and equipment to) it's possible they got it early afternoon and up in that timeframe...

 

not 100% on this but i THINK WSI can run with only two machines ("max" box that outputs graphics and "prism" box that stores data?) and they use off-the-shelf HP workstations for all their equipment. vendors fly things out all the time so it's not unheard of...

 

I was thinking about your point that WSI probably shipped out a spare machine they had lying around to KHOU, but the graphics/fonts etc were present on their graphics. It would definitely be interesting to know how that was all set up (if the WSI machine was pre-loaded with TEGNA graphics, if another TEGNA station had a spare WSI system and sent it to Houston, or if it's a remote feed...)

 

I was gonna ask how did you guys know that KUSA was running KHOU's coverage, but I just saw the TVU/KUSA bars appear on their YouTube feed...

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There have been two satellite feeds on Galaxy 16 associated with the KHOU operation since yesterday. One is a backhaul from the KUHT building uplinked by a KHOU SNG van to the station running KHOU's master control. The second is a switched feed (with all graphics, etc.) sent from master control for downlink at the KHOU transmitter. For this feed, WFAA was using The Switch to send the feed to an Intelsat teleport for uplinking, while KUSA appears to be uplinking the feed themselves (they would have experience in doing this, since many Denver area talking head live shots originate from KUSA). I suspect the internet streams are being routed to a TVU unit at KUSA and may not necessarily reflect what is going out on satellite to the KHOU transmitter, as the TVU feed could go down while the satellite feed stays up, or vice versa.

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