Last Wednesday evening’s storm caused damage to local legacy talk radio station WGMD 92.7 FM.
Walt Palmer, Chief Engineer, and Operations Manager, reports a power surge entered the station through a cable TV wire and wreaked havoc on several critical electronic components.
The station went off the air at 10:47 pm on Wednesday evening and returned to normal programming at 3:23 am Thursday morning.
“One of my biggest nightmares” reports Palmer “is for those people who depend on WGMD to wake them up on their clock/radios. If WGMD is silent people who depend on us to be there will miss their wake-up call and be late for work. And I work hard not to disappoint our listeners.”
The station suffered the loss of their listener call-in lines, as well as several other internal systems.
As of Friday afternoon, phones had been restored as were several other systems.
“The worst part of this whole episode” reports Palmer, “is following a lightning strike or power surge, other components may fail weeks later due to the stress. I am starting to see stress failures and keeping up with them to provide a reliable product, both on-the-air and our streaming platforms.”
WGMD is celebrating its 39th year broadcasting to Sussex County, DE and beyond. WGMD can be heard on-the-air at 92.7 FM, and streaming via the WGMD App, Alexa, Tune-In and others.
