I've scheduled this entry to publish at 3AM local time so that it will be September 11 in the Pacific time zone when it is posted.

Nine years ago today, the World Trade Center towers in New York were destroyed. The generally accepted and Occam's Razor compliant reason is that terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon hijacked several aircraft and caused them to collide with the aforementioned towers.

The exact reasoning is irrelevant to the purposes of this site, of course; the real relevance is found in the subsequent destruction of the buildings, and thus the impact on the broadcast community and those who depended on broadcasts from the World Trade Center. Since it had gone up in the mid-1970s, most television broadcasters had relocated themselves from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center. In fact, this list of broadcasters had their transmitters on the World Trade Center:

• WCBS (CBS)
• WNBC (NBC)
• WNYW (FOX)
• WABC (ABC)
• WWOR (then UPN, now MyN)
• WPIX (then WB, now CW)
• WNET (PBS)
• WPXN (then PAX, now ION)
• WNJU (Telemundo)

While this list of broadcasters remained on the Empire State Building:

• WNYE
• WXTV (Univision)
• WHSE (now Telefutura WFUT)

And of that long list of broadcasters on the World Trade Center, only WCBS had a backup transmitter anywhere at all. Due to its backup facility on the Empire State Building, WCBS was the only English-language network affiliate to still have a decent analog signal over the air for a significant amount of time afterward.

Why am I posting all of this? If you've ever wondered about the aftermath of the event, I strongly recommend you read Scott Fybush's "9/11 Plus One" which was published on September 10, 2002. It is extremely thorough and well-written, and gives all the little details about the day of the incident, the immediate response, and the slow recovery of over the air broadcasting in the New York City DMA. I've probably read it at least 15 times over the years as it's simply fascinating to read and see what happened on that day and the time that followed.

Let us hope nothing like this happens again.