Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Dished out

A fixture on top of the Tracy Press building met a unceremonious end when a crane removed the Associated Press satellite dish this morning.
The huge dish was hold over from the days of low-bandwith-power telecommunications satellites that required a massive receiving dish to haul in their signal.  Years ago AP moved from transmitting by satellite to transmission over the internet with secure login sites.  The dish sat inactive long before we dropped the AP contract.
Crews removing our dish this morning said they have been going around to many newspapers in the Central Valley removing these behemoth dishes.  All the dishes in Sacramento and Modesto are gone, the fiberglass dishes scrapped after removing the metal bracket s for recycling.
I'm sure some will see the dish's removal as a sign the paper is in danger of closing soon.  I'm just glad it is off the roof.  I was waiting for it to crash through the roof into the break room upstairs.  Now that would have been a photo-op.

1 comment:

Cheri said...

I can remember clearly the day the dish was installed. It was a huge deal for us to get such a gigantic AP satellite on our roof!