October 2012

Hurricane Sandy disrupts Northeast telecom networks

Power outages and flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy disrupted telecommunications services resulting in spotty coverage for cellphones, home telephones and Internet services.

Verizon Communications, which serves many of the states in the hurricane's path, appeared to have suffered some of the worst damage from the storm. The company said that storm surge resulted in flooding at several Verizon central offices that hold telecom equipment in Lower Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island "causing power failures and rendering back-up power systems at these sites inoperable."
Sprint Nextel, the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider said it was seeing outages at some cell sites because of the power outages across all the states in Sandy's path including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Maryland, North Virginia and New England.
AT&T said it was experiencing some issues in areas heavily affected by the storm.
People complained of outages to their cable telephone, Internet and television services from providers ranging from Comcast, Cablevision Systems and Verizon in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.

Hurricane Sandy: Where’s the climate-change angle, media?

For days, weather forecasters gave their viewers a lot of trees when it came to coverage of Hurricane Sandy. We learned about the speed of the storm, its famous left turn, its millibars and its (quite accurately portrayed) destructive potential. Now people are asking for more forest. Climate-change forest, that is. Is Sandy the creature of a warming planet?

Weather Channel spokeswoman Shirley Powell said, “Climate change informed our forecasting of this storm from the beginning. We have been completely focused on saving lives and property as the storm approached and was hitting, but as the storm passes, you will see more discussion of this topic in our coverage on TV and online. We have two prominent bloggers that have passionately discussed this topic in the past — Jeff Masters and Stu Ostro.”

Local News Goes into Sandy Overdrive

As we move into Day 2 of Hurricane Sandy (now reclassified as Superstorm Sandy), TV news crews from Washington to Boston are working at full force providing wall-to-wall coverage, armed with precautions including ropes to tether satellite masts, cash in case of getting stranded and out-of-market reinforcements.

Having planned for storm coverage since last week — and after ramping it up over the weekend — stations went wall to wall starting at 4 a.m. ET Oct 29, and as Gannett’s WUSA Washington News Director Fred D’Ambrosi puts it: “I’m assuming we are going to be on the air for the next several days and we are prepared to do it." Throughout the day Oct 29, local TV news operations in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston ran non-stop storm tracking radar images and news tickers with emergency information and weather updates. Reporters, many pulling 12-hour shifts, stood by coastlines and waterways from Ocean City, Md., to New England poised for potentially destructive surges. Bracing for widespread power outages cutting off viewers’ access to television, stations put particular emphasis on feeding websites, social media and mobile apps — among the most likely sources of information accessible when the power goes out.

Sandy Blasts Record Digital Traffic

Users who still had power and internet connectivity were producing record online and mobile traffic at some sites on Oct 29, with The Weather Channel (TWC) reporting 450 million pages views on its various mobile and online offerings and 298 million page views on weather.com. Both those numbers were records. The overall numbers nearly doubled the previous record of 249 million from Feb. 1, 2011 and were much higher than the 183 million seen on Aug. 27, 2011 from Hurricane Irene. At 1 p.m. ET, the company also told B&C that traffic levels are pacing towards another record for Oct. 30.

Sandy takes down Nielsen

Television ratings service Nielsen said Oct 29's numbers will be delayed because of super storm Sandy. That was to be expected. Not only is Nielsen based in the East Village of New York City, one of the area's hardest hit by weather and power outages, the number of local East Coast television stations preempting network programming for storm coverage will make it incredibly difficult to figure out who was watching what. Nielsen hopes to release numbers later Tuesday. Fortunately for Nielsen, much of its actual number crunching is done in Florida.

Sandy Puts a Crimp in NYC-Based Shows

On Oct 29, three people showed up to watch a taping of Telepictures’ Anderson Live – about 207 fewer than sit in Anderson Cooper’s studio audience most days. Two of those guests lived nearby and tweeted the New York-based show to ask if they needed people in the audience. They did. Despite the then-looming Hurricane Sandy, Cooper and guest co-host Ashleigh Banfield went on with the show, including giving viewers advice to stay safe. In New York, only Anderson Live, CBS Television Distribution’s Inside Edition and Disney-ABC’s Live with Kelly and Michael were in production as planned.

All the Internet Projects That Help Us Through Sandy

Stuck inside with only the Internet, responsible web citizens are doing what they can to inform and aid during the storm. The Internet has created a bunch of projects to help us through Sandy, by either making it easier to parse information, or by providing places for people to send and collect more relevant data. It's pretty incredible what the Web can do, while Sandy has rendered movement useless. Below we've put together a list of all the online projects popping up in light of the hurricane:

Google's Crowdsourced Crisis Map
SandyFeed
Hurricane Hackers
Collect Water Samples for Science
Reddit

How A Facebook Page Prepared A Region For Hurricane Sandy, And What That Teaches About Social Media

[Commentary] Thanks to the remarkably effective Facebook page “Hudson Valley Weather” I feel I am as prepared as one could reasonably be, both practically and emotionally. I owe them a significant debt for the information they provided, as well as the resulting peace of mind that comes from being prepared. Hudson Valley Weather, known on Facebook as HVWX1, describes its purpose as “provid(ing) localized and detailed forecasts for the Hudson Valley.” And that they do. They really get right what they do, both the weather forecasting and how to use social media to suit their purpose. I actually think they’ve stumbled on a secret sauce for how to leverage expertise for maximum impact: have expertise, enable activity both online and off, support (not create) community.

Newsrooms’ digital Sandy coverage

Several big news services have put public service ahead of profit by doing away with their paywalls for the duration of Hurricane Sandy.

The New York Times allowed unlimited sitewide access from Sunday afternoon, and spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told Poynter that the paywall would not be reinstated until the weather emergency is over. The Wall Street Journal and Newsday have also removed their paywalls. Visitors to The New York Times now have unlimited access to several interactive maps, can contribute their own photos, watch live video and updates, and read a steady stream of ongoing reporting. Many other organizations are also using Sandy as an opportunity to put their technological capabilities into practice, with some impressive results.

Newspapers' Digital Circulation Climbs

Finally, here's some good news for U.S. newspapers, for a change: the Audit Bureau of Circulations has issued its twice-annual newspaper circulation report, and it shows that overall circulation held steady as papers’ efforts to expand their digital distribution paid off.

The standout was The New York Times, whose total circulation grew more than 40 percent to 1.6 million. Its digital circulation more than doubled in the past year to 896,352, the result of an aggressive push to grow its paid digital subscription base via its paywall, which went up more than a year ago (though it wasn't enough to cure all its revenue ills). With the increase in digital, the Times’ online daily circulation now tops its print circulation, which comes in at 717,513. The Times’ Sunday circulation also sharply increased, from 27.7 percent to 2.1 million. Archrival The Wall Street Journal, with a more established paid site, grew its total circ 9.4 percent to 2.3 million as its digital circ surged to 794,594 from 537,469 a year ago. Overall, the Audit Bureau report showed daily circ decreased 0.2 percent while total Sunday circulation increased 0.6 percent, with digital circulation now accounting for 15.3 percent of total circulation, up from 9.8 percent a year ago.

Benton

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