News 13 ABC broadcasting has been restored

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WMBB) – Around 7 a.m. Saturday morning, the WMBB News Station encountered a power issue that rendered our satellites inoperable.

This electrical surge took down our broadcast signals, the tower cam, the phone lines, and more.

“I got a call from our hub and they said they couldn’t see us. So that was the start of it,” said WMBB Chief Engineer Laurence Richesin.

Engineers came in immediately following the incident and have been working tirelessly to get everything restored.

“And of course, we get here and then we’re off the air. And it seemed like the whole control room was lit up with red lights on all the equipment. So, it’s kind of daunting when you walk in and that’s all you see,” said Richesin.

Engineers said that was just the beginning of the issue.

“As the day progressed, Saturday, then found that we did have a transmitter that was actually on the air, but just in black. So that put us back in the studio again and then that’s where we started finding pieces of equipment that were not functioning at all,” said Richesin.

All five satellite dishes were out of order and several computers in the building were no longer functioning.

To at least get something on the air, we had to grab signals from other Nexstar markets via a TVU network.

TVU allows you to send and receive video and audio through the nation’s network of cell phone towers.

That’s why many viewers were seeing news broadcasts from Knoxville, Tennessee.

“We took their feed over the TVU to bring it into the building so we could get it on the air. However, they were on an eastern feed instead of a central feed. Therefore, the timings were off,” said Richesin.

To get us back on the air, we’ve been ordering parts from neighboring stations.

“They worked many hours over the weekend, many hours Saturday, many hours Sunday. We had a person drive all night from Knoxville, Tennessee, with a part in and got here about 9 a.m. in the morning, at 10:15 a.m., we were back on the air,” said WMBB General Manager Terry Cole.

The goal was to get ABC up and then CW up and running.

“That’s our number one priority right now, is to get that satellite dish back and then get the CW satellite dish back,” Cole said.

Our staff was able to accomplish that a little after noon on Monday.

As the repair process continues, you may experience a few glitches here and there.

“We continue to work extremely hard to get everything back up and fixed,” Cole said.

Our phone system will be down until at least Tuesday.

If you need to reach us, email us at news@wmbb.com and we’ll call back on cell phones.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to mypanhandle.com.