Minneapolis NBC affiliate KARE 11 has found creative new ways to get newscasts on the air after a fire forced staff out of its Golden Valley headquarters.
The station reported that a transformer outside the building caught fire on Tuesday, July 22, sending smoke into the building. No one was injured but staff has been unable to return to the building as of Wednesday.
On the day of the fire, KARE’s 4 and 5 p.m. newscasts did not air, while the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts originated from outside of the Telefarm transmitter site in Shoreview. Reporter Kent Erdahl posted a social media video showing preparations:
However, the initial newscasts were not seen by all viewers since some TV providers had switched over to other NBC affiliates due KARE’s outage. The station’s livestream initially continued to air a loop of the noon newscast, the last before the fire.
Wednesday, anchor Lauren Leamanczyk and meteorologist John Zeigler presented every single newscast from Sunrise through 10 p.m. from Atlanta, tossing back to Shoreview for updates from other anchors at the transmitter site.
The station provided an update Wednesday evening showing what it’s been doing to get newscasts on the air and saying it could still be a few more days before it’s able to return to normal operations:
Thursday morning, anchors in Shoreview took the lead opening the newscast but Leamanczyk and Zeigler were also back on the air from Atlanta.
The newscasts can be seen on demand through NewsON.