WTVO-WQRF in Rockford, IL was forced off the air on Friday and staff evacuated the building as heavy snow and low altitude winds caused guy wires on the stations’ tower to whip around wildly.

“Seeing the wires behave that way, in all the years that I’ve been here I’ve never seen them like that,” chief engineer Mike Real said.  “They could actually start shaking the tower down, or cause damage to the tower which is what we wanted to check on.”

In addition to the evacuation at WTVO-WQRF, 12 homes near the tower were evacuated Friday night. Read more

Chris Topf, director of sales at WNWO, has been promoted to president and CEO of the Toledo NBC-affiliate.

Topf has been with the Barrington Broadcasting-owned WNWO since April. Prior to that, he was Barrington’s vice president of national sales from 2009-2011.

“Chris brings a great understanding of how to develop business across all platforms of a local station and has a great understanding of the qualitative research tools that are available to better get results for the advertiser,” Barrington Broadcasting Group president and COO Chris Cornelius said in a statement.

Ben Tucker has been acting president of the station since the spring. He replaced Jon Skorburg, who was let go last year as part of an internal shakeup to make WNWO, which consistently places third in the Toledo market in ratings, more competitive.