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Digital equipment is harder to fix than analog, but it doesn’t fail as often. That makes it less likely that a failed part is kept around as a spare. It also means that the maintenance staff is smaller and tends to be more specialized.
In the case of WXXI the failure was on the tower. The station does not have a climber on staff. The climber they hired came from Syracuse. (Alpha Antenna Service) I don’t know what failure they found nor if the failed part happened to be available. I did learn that the WXXI tower suffers from a vortex problem, meaning that it oscillates in the wind. That causes mechanical stress on the antenna and transmission line.
I am a retired TV engineer who also did a bit of tower climbing and antenna troubleshooting. Like Joe, I grew up in WNY and still root for the Bills.
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