[Peace-discuss] DN! -- MIA on UPTV Ch 6 Fri, Jan 21

[Randall Cotton]

UPTV failed to broadcast DN! yesterday, January 22 as well as January 12 and
January 5. So far, they are averaging one missed program per week. I (and
others) have contacted them about these outages each time. As you can see in
my message below to Chris Foster (UPTV Coordinator) I'm escalating pressure
to resolve this unacceptable situation...


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Randall Cotton" <recotton at earthlink.net>
To: "Foster, Chris" <clfoster at city.urbana.il.us>
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: DN


: Thanks for your note Chris.
:
: While I am very upset about this, I'm not going to get upset at you
: personally.
:
: While I appreciate your statement that you will "work harder", you have
: tried to persuade me that things will improve in the past yet they have
not.
: There has been one outage every week so far, so I hope you can understand
: that it is difficult for me to put faith in your assurances at this point.
:
: Let's focus on preventing these outages. I'd like to work *with* you on
: this. If it takes the purchase of additional equipment, for instance, to
: make the configuration more reliable, I don't rule out the possibility of
: coming up with funds for that.
:
: In the interest of getting at the root of the problem and engineering a
: solution, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for details on the
precise
: cause of the three outages and what, exactly, you have done or plan to do
to
: prevent them in the future.
:
: You have told me that the first outage was due to the dish being knocked
out
: of alignment by wind. While the winds that day were stronger than normal,
: they were not particularly unusual for East-Central Illinois and, as I'm
: sure you know, it is not unreasonable to expect occasional gusts of 50 mph
: or more, especially in the spring and fall. For a dish that small, it
seems
: to me one could tighten things down so that even the strongest winds would
: not blow the dish of course.
:
: What have you done to fix the situation? Did you personally realign and
: tighten the bolts on the dish? Can you be certain it won't happen again?
Did
: you test the dish by physically trying to push it out of alignment? I
think
: that would be a good test.
:
: In addition, no matter how tight the dish is, over time it will eventually
: go out of alignment due to tiny accumulated movements from buffeting by
the
: wind. Have you set up a routine to check on the reception reading
: periodically? Perhaps once a month? So that you can monitor the
degradation
: over time and readjust *before* the signal starts failing?
:
: For the second outage, you have said it was due to "operator error". Could
: you describe exactly what went wrong? It's not necessary to identify who
was
: at fault, but what was the exact nature of the mistake? And what has been
: done to prevent that in the future?
:
: For this last outage, you haven't said what the cause is. Was this another
: instance of "operator error"? Was it the same error? Again, who is at
fault
: is not important. Again, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a
: precise description of exactly how this happened since there is a pattern
: developing here and your hopes and assurances that things will improve
have
: not been realized.
:
: I would prefer an e-mail response to this note, but if you prefer, just
give
: me a call. Then I'll make a written record of our conversation and send it
: to you so you can check it.
:
: Thanks
: R
:
:
: ----- Original Message ----- 
: From: "Foster, Chris" <clfoster at city.urbana.il.us>
: To: "Randall Cotton" <recotton at earthlink.net>
: Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 8:12 AM
: Subject: DN
:
:
: Randall,
: Unfortunately I am aware that DN did not make the air this morning.  All I
: can say is that I am sorry and that UPTV will work harder to make sure
that
: DN is on every weekday morning.
:
: Chris
:
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jencart" <jencart at mycidco.com>
To: <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 11:17 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] DN! -- MIA on UPTV Ch 6 Fri, Jan 21


: Hi Progressive Viewers,
:
: Any idea why there was no DN! yesterday morning?  Pls excuse if the reason
was already posted to the list.... My e-mail's been kinda messed up
lately/my fault, not the list(s) this time.
:
: Thanks,
: Jenifer
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