At the time of this posting KPFK is off the air. Listeners this morning report hearing the broadcast of Democracy Now suddenly switch to a classical Spanish station and then go to dead air. KPFK is believed to be off the air due to technical problems with signal transmission. There is speculation that interference from a station broadcasting on the same frequency in Tijuana may be the cause

At this time there is no word of when KPFK will be able to resume broadcasting.

A caller able to reach KPFK reports the problem is with the transmitter atop Mt. Wilson.
Engineers for the station are on Mt. Wilson working on it now.

The station has received hundreds of calls from listeners. KPFK is still producing programs and broadcasting on their website. http://www.kpfk.org/

I wish KPFK would tell everyone what happened that caused the outage and why it took so long to repair.

Was it sabatoge?

Lack of maintenance?

Lack of money?

Lack of money spent on and concern with maintenance?

Lack of a part?

Did someone not know what they were doing?

Did some squirrel eat a wire?

Could it happen again?

My recollection is that the station in the past year or two spent some money updating the transmitter to avoid situation like this.

By not saying anything, station management is fueling speculation of a cover up.

KPFK management isn't fueling speculation of some kind of coverup - LA IMC is fueling speculation of a coverup. This story isn't "news." Man bites dog is news. KPFK NOT going off the air for six months Might be news. Someone is grinding an axe here. Who?

Somebody said:

This story isn't "news." Man bites dog is news



There are commercial readio and TV stations in LA and elsewhere that haven't had 10 hours of unscheduled outage in decades.

Commercial broadcasting equipment is designed to be as realiable as the phone system once was.

An outage this long is man bites dog in commercial broadcasting circles.