It was a Chamber of Commerce type of day in the City of New York. With cloudless blue skies and low humidity, September 11, 2001, started off as a picture-perfect morning for those in the Tri-State Area. For those tuned to WXRK-FM 92.3 “K-Rock,” The Howard Stern Show was engaged in a conversation about an encounter with Pamela Anderson and chatting with Stern’s stylist when, suddenly, he “didn’t want to interrupt the fun” but shared a breaking news story … “a serious news story.” A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, Stern told his listeners.
At nearly the same time, viewers to Live with Regis and Kelly, starring Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa, were being told firsthand with an unknowing live audience in the show’s Manhattan studios awaiting an interview with guest Joan Rivers of “the big news story of the day that’s developing right now right here in New York City,” Philbin shared. The studio audience, in place for 20 minutes, gasped as live footage of the first plane crash was shown.
On this 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks carried out in New York; and Washington, D.C.; and in memory of the heroes of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., we look back on that Tuesday morning with two key observations. First, it showed the power of live broadcast media in a time of crisis — a fact that continues today. Second, it taught one news operation that having an emergency contact and operations plan was essential.
BIG APPLE EYES AND EARS
At 9:02am and 15 seconds, Live with Regis and Kelly showed to all around the country the first views of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan following the first of two planes that struck the Twin Towers. “We don’t know what the intent was, whether it was deliberate or accidental,” Philbin said some 12 minutes after it happened. Philbin even suggested it could have been a suicide bomber as Ripa noted it was one of the worst things she has ever seen. While Philbin and Ripa tried to go on with the show, seconds later that plan was temporarily dashed: the hosts and studio audience, on a live monitor fed to all at home, showed the explosion caused by a second jet that crashed into the other tower.
With a live program going out to the nation, Philbin and Ripa did their best to go on with the show, keeping the conversation light with discussions about her child’s first lunchbox for the next two minutes. From that point, confusion and uncertainty led Philbin to guess that three planes had hit the World Trade Center, leading producer Michael Gelman to go to a commercial break. After the break, Philbin and Ripa returned briefly; by 9:11am Eastern the show was abandoned, with coverage of WABC-7’s live feed given to stations receiving the program via C-Band satellite system that had not switched to breaking news from America’s TV networks.
For radio listeners who regularly tuned to Stern’s often tawdry morning show, the abrupt shift in tone from a conversation about Stern’s sexual possibilities with Pam Anderson to the events at the nearby World Trade Center demonstrated how a syndicated audio program hardly known for breaking news could suddenly shift gears and become a vital and unique source of important information of its own creation.
For those in locales including Miami and Los Angeles, Stern’s second-by-second updates provided listeners with first-hand reports of what was unfolding — after Stern attempted to return to his encounter with Anderson. Upon learning of a second plane that, at that moment, may have hit the World Trade Center, the normal programming ceased. Stern and his crew, along with “Crazy Cabbie” on the streets of Manhattan, gave listeners live on-the-scene reporting few other news sources could deliver. “So it’s a terrorist attack, isn’t it?” Stern said before famously announcing minutes later, “We are under attack.”
Unlike Live with Regis and Kelly, which scrapped its show as stations airing the program shifted to a special report, The Howard Stern Show — as journalists across the U.S. were doing — was scrambling to get the facts as fast as they could not only for their own knowledge, but for listeners across the nation, too. The remainder of the program has been well-documented over the years as a fine example of live radio doing what it does best: delivering vital details in an instant, on a medium that is portable and accessible easily.
Twenty-five years later, in an environment where smartphones can deliver emergency alerts at a moment’s notice and social media platforms abound, broadcast television and radio remain vital go-to trusted news sources in a time of crisis. It is why the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act‘s passage remains critically important. It is why advancements including ATSC 3.0 and NEXTGEN TV can help make over-the-air free television future-proof and better than what it has been delivering for 75 years. Howard Stern may be on SiriusXM and Regis Philbin may no longer be with us, but the need for resilient live broadcast media remains essential. Universal access is a must.
A cell phone can give you the alert. But what happens when you want more … and in an emergency internet access isn’t to be had? Netflix, Spotify and the on-demand entertainment hubs can make you laugh or cry, but they won’t keep you safe. Broadcast radio and television can, just as they did on 9/11/2001.
COMMUNICATIONS LESSONS FROM RBR+TVBR’S EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
As two national broadcast media shows scrambled to act in the 9am Eastern hour, a somewhat different situation was transpiring just past 6am Pacific, in Los Angeles, for the team of editors and reporters at former trade publication Radio & Records.
With a phone call that went to the answering machine, as I was still recovering from the previous night’s birthday beverages of choice, I heard my stepmother’s voice on the line from Miami. “You might want to put the television on to any channel,” I heard, still half-asleep.
I dragged myself into the living room to find the television channel my roommate and I last tuned to showing a split-screen shot of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Confused as to what was transpiring, I woke up my roommate and asked him to watch the screen as I needed to pay a visit to the bathroom. Yes, I was in the bathroom as the second plane hit the World Trade Center in New York, leading my roommate to scream out obscenities we need not publish.
While many thoughts raced through my mind, one that immediately stood out was the R&R office, which had recently relocated to the 41st floor of 2049 Century Park East in Century City, the former home of HBO. It was nearly atop one of the two “twin towers” in this part of Los Angeles. I was horrified.
How are we going work today, and publish our weekly newspaper, when we work in an office with the exact same profile as the World Trade Center?
Even worse, I immediately began to wonder how I would be able to communicate with our core editorial team and ask if we were going to work or not. In September 2001, there was no emergency contact list shared among staff. E-mail was limited to a desktop computer, which I was not monitoring as I began to pack a duffel bag with a few days’ clothes and contemplated driving to Eureka, where my sister’s family resided at the time. The one phone number for a co-worker I had was for our News Editor because we were friends; I left a somewhat rambling and most coherent message attempting to explain what was going on. That was ultimately enough to start a chain of phone calls linking one to another and then another, until it finally reached decision-makers who determined that going to work was not happening.
Meanwhile, calls were made to our Washington, D.C., office in McPherson Square; they were evacuating following the events at the Pentagon, with black, billowing smoke visible from the south. The Music Row office in Nashville played triage, as they were the lone operation to have contact information for every leader at the company.
Eventually, once the day’s events concluded, we gathered back in the office on September 12 to console one another, and move diligently to produce a special edition focused on the experiences and live on-air action of radio industry stars across New York and the rest of the U.S. From there, a communications plan was put into place. Before 9/11, privacy was the biggest reason not to share a person’s phone number. Now, sharing a contact number became a matter of safety and concern.
Today, in a world where a major earthquake, hurricane or other catastrophe could emerge at a moment’s notice, the lesson learned is to have a plan. We didn’t, because it hadn’t been necessary until it became an urgent matter to quickly resolve. If your station today doesn’t have an emergency plan involving staff and operations, we urge you to develop one now. That’s one lesson a senseless act of terrorism brought to our workplace 25 years ago today.
Adam R Jacobson served as an editor at Radio + Records in its Los Angeles headquarters from December 1995 through August 2006. He joined Radio + Television Business Report in August 2016 and is presently based in Boca Raton, Fla.
