No April Fool’s Joke: 6 Radio Stations Crash Monday Morning

All six of Townsquare Media's Shreveport radio stations - including KEEL - found themselves scrambling for programming Monday morning when the computer operating system for all of those stations crashed.

As of ten o'clock Monday morning, the source of the trouble, which also affected Townsquare stations in other markets, had not been identified.

Morning shows on each of the six stations, 101.7 / 710 KEEL, KISS Country 93.7, 96.5 KVKI, K 94-5, Highway 98-9 and 1130 The Tiger, were interrupted as the system went offline and reverted to default settings.

On 101.7 / 710 KEEL, Robert J Wright and Erin McCarty were able to continue with their news / talk format, just without commercials, bumper music, etc. Listeners were able to hear Fox News cues in the background, since the system went down during a Fox cast, and computer commands to switch off the network were eliminated.

Elsewhere in the building, Gary McCoy and Erin Bristol on KISS Country 93.7 played audio from YouTube videos, K 94-5's Chica and the Bald Guy were able to continue an abbreviated show by hacking into their station's digital "emergency" control room. KVKI and Highway were able to stay with their satellite morning shows, Kidd Kraddick and Walton and Johnson, respectively. And The Tiger's Tim Fletcher Show, finding themselves in the same boat as KEEL's Robert and Erin on KEEL, continued with their  uninterrupted sports gabfest.

Townsquare's engineers and ITs, both local and corporate, continue to work on restoring the operating system to working order, though no time for a return to normal operation is known. In the meantime, listeners patience for things out-of-the-ordinary is greatly appreciated and, hopefully, the interruptions in regular programming will be too small to notice.