As I said to Brewing, I actually worked on one of those 250,000 watt Mexican stations back in late 73/early 74.
The station threw a huge cocktail party the night we signed on the huge transmitter, and we brought in big time advertising and broadcasting execs from all over the country.
Things were going great until 10 pm, when the rock-crushing plant down the street shut down for the night, and the current doubled on the line (Mexico didn’t have regulators on their lines).
The massive surge of power fried the transmitter with all those VIPs watching. My boss handed me his drink, said, “I quit,” walked to his car and drove home without another word.
It took our engineering staff almost 6 weeks to repair the damage. Luckily we still had the old 50,000 watt transmitter available for use, but the damage was done to our reputation.
Ah, the days of my youth…
Go Frogs!