The morning of Tuesday, August 5 went down in the MJ Morning Show history books as a pretty unusual day. The Q105 104.7 FM signal was off the air from 7:08 to 9:06 AM. The cause? A comedy of errors among the transmitter sites.
First, there was a TECO power outage at the main transmitter site for the radio station which is located in the Palm River area of Hillsborough County. The nearby backup generator also failed. Then, the third and final backup in St. Petersburg near the Beasley Media Group studios also went down. This means for nearly two hours, listeners only heard static if they were listening on a terrestrial radio. A listener named TJ was the first to let the crew know about the outage.
While the FM signal went down, MJ and the crew did continue the show for streaming listeners could tune in either on one of the streaming apps like iHeart or TuneIn, or watch MJTV on the YouTube stream. MJ sounded extremely down in the dumps and kept saying it was “the worst feeling in the world as a broadcaster” to not have the ability to reach the listeners like he normally does, and he was afraid listeners would move to other shows and not come back. He also kept saying he was seriously ready to call it quits and claimed he was texting management that this would be his final broadcast. He and the crew decided not to delve into any of their regularly planned material and instead took calls from listeners who were hearing the show online. Many callers attempted to talk MJ off the ledge by offering their support. With no FCC regulations for streaming audio, Both MJ and Fester dropped an “s-bomb” at different points as well.
Another interesting moment happened during the stream. For the first time on the show, MJ told the real story of why the original run of the MJ Morning Show left the airwaves back in February of 2012. He said management at 93.3 FLZ at the time felt pressured by Hot 101.5, a new Top 40 radio station that popped up in Tampa back in 2011. That station was running promos poking fun at MJ and saying he was getting old. So, management decided to go younger – and much cheaper – by canceling MJ and syndicating The Kane Show from Washington, D.C. He also said the company (Clear Channel at the time) paid out the remainder of his contract. We don’t know how much time was left on his deal though.
This wasn’t the first time the MJ Morning Show and Q105 have experienced a major transmitter failure. Back in 2022, a tropical storm took the station off the air for nearly two hours. MJ had a similar tone and threatened to leave the station back then as well. We can only hope that no further transmitter issues crop up in the future because the third time just might be the charm for MJ to say goodbye to Beasley. On the bright side, however, hearing MJ and the crew in an “unfiltered” environment off of the regular FM signal is kind of neat. It reminds us of the MJ Morning Show Podcast which ran for over a year from September of 2019 through the beginning of the show’s return to Q105 in October of 2020.