NAPLES, FLA. — At 10:45pm local time Wednesday (9/16), something odd was impacting the 10pm newscast for a TV station owned by The E.W. Scripps Co.
Instead of news anchor Jane Monreal — who began her career at KFWB-AM 980 in Los Angeles and transitioned to television at KABC-7 — and 17-year veteran Patrick Nolan offering up the latest headlines and features, Scripps’ syndicated newsmagazine The List was on the air.
What was going on? WFTX-TV in Fort Myers was, in its own words, “experiencing an interruption due to technical difficulties.”
It’s now known that this iPhone “Program Note” dispatched Wednesday night was an understatement.
WFTX’s staff was evacuated from the building during Wednesday’s 10pm newscast.
It explains why the station did not respond to RBR+TVBR’s Tweet asking what had happened.
According to station representatives, an electrical surge was experienced at its broadcast facility in Cape Coral, opposite Fort Myers on the north side of the Caloosahatchee River. Soon afterward, smoke entered the station’s control room.
The incident occurred just after 10:30pm local time, with Monreal and Nolan just starting the second half of the WFTX nighttime newscast. Thunderstorms were present in the vicinity of the station, and viewers tuning in experienced a brief disruption in signal, caused reportedly by a power surge.
That’s when News Director Christian Tackett noticed an odor that prompted him to evacuate, for safety purposes.
WFTX went dark. That’s when The List was plugged in as temporary programming.
A local fire department crew checked everything out; there was no fire.
News programming resumed Thursday at 4:30am as usual, while Monreal and Nolan were on Facebook Live as the fire alarms were sounding to give an update last night as to why the newscast was abandoned halfway through.
A lightning strike is what is believed to have transpired, as the generator did not kick in.
Standing outside of the building last night, the anchors and news directors could smell the smoke; those in the control room noted that the smoke was “real bad.”
— Additional reporting by Randy Kabrich, special to RBR+TVBR
