Five public stations in Hurricane Milton’s path over central Florida maintained broadcast operations last night.
Transmitters for WUCF’s TV and FM stations in Orlando are running on generator power, according to Executive Director Jennifer Cook.
The stations are airing coverage produced by the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network, based at WUFT in Gainesville. News teams from WMFE in Orlando and WMNF in Tampa ramped up their coverage before and during the storm.
Current connected with GMs of five stations in central Florida for these updates:
“We are tired, but we are all safe and well,” Judith Smelser, president and GM of WMFE in Orlando, told Current in an email. To ensure “seamless coverage” of Milton, Smelser and 17 members of the news, content, and engineering teams rode out the hurricane at the station’s headquarters, along with their family members and pets.
The station is reporting on Milton and its aftermath on its live blog, which launched on Monday, and social media channels. Earlier this week, the news team added top-of-the-hour newscasts and “rolling special coverage,” which began Wednesday and included reports from FPREN, local updates and interviews with local officials and residents. At 6 a.m. Thursday WMFE resumed its regular program schedule, augmented with newscasts, briefings, local news reporting and a special episode of Engage, the station’s local show and podcast.
“Our reporters are heading out into the field to survey the damage and talk to people affected by the storm,” Smelser wrote. “We plan to be staffed throughout the weekend.”
At WUCF in Orlando, all staff have been accounted for and many are without power and internet service, ED Jennifer Cook said in an email this morning. “We have a lot of tree debris around us, but so far no staff reports of severe damage.”
Updates from FPREN are running on both WUCF stations and their social media channels, Cook said, and the news staff are interviewing emergency officials via Zoom. She anticipates that much of this coverage will run on Newsnight, WUCF-TV’s weekly public affairs series, which airs tomorrow evening.
WUCF-TV is also airing its Meet the Helpers video shorts, which teach children about people who work in public service, emergency response and medical roles.
Randi Zimmerman, GM of Tampa’s WMNF, cited pre-storm preparations for keeping the community radio station on the air during the storm. The station also maintained its internet stream.
“It was a bit of a miracle and a whole lot of planning before-hand,” she said. “I cannot express my gratitude for the tech and operations people who are devoted to their work on behalf of the WMNF community.”
WMNF news staff and a volunteer supplemented FPREN’s coverage with local reporting, she said.
“Since we are live at all times, we also took phone calls and read emails over the air,” Zimmerman said. “We provided more information when asked based on these calls and emails. This connection during difficult and stressful times matters most to people.”
WEDU, Tampa’s PBS station, reported damage to a transmitter site after the storm blew off part of the roof, but its broadcast service was not affected, according to President Paul Grove. WEDU’s broadcast operations are run by CentralCast Alliance in Syracuse, N.Y.
All members of the staff are safe, Grove said, but “there is property damage to a couple staffer’s homes.”
“We’re getting kind of used to this,” Grove said of Hurricane Milton’s magnitude. “It’s become too familiar.”
WFIT in Melbourne, an NPR news and Triple A station in Melbourne, Fla., is “doing fine,” said GM Steve Yasko. “We didn’t lose power … and continued to run our regular programming with FPREN updates inserted. Our staff is safe.” The station’s university licensee, Florida Institute of Technology, is shut down until Tuesday because of the holiday Monday, he wrote in an email to Current. “We can handle operations remotely over the weekend.”
This story will be updated as more details are reported.