Update: 3 area radio stations off air Tuesday

Three area radio stations were off the air for a 14-hour period Tuesday including during the stations' popular morning drive times.

WVSC-FM SC 103, WLHH-FM 104.9 "The Surf" and WVSC-HD 2 "Easy" 106.5 all went down shortly after midnight and were off the air as of 4:15 p.m. Tuesday because of an Internet upgrade, according to the stations' general manager Mike Buxser.

"I've been managing and doing radio for over 40 years and have never had anything like this to happen anywhere," Buxser said Tuesday afternoon.

The stations went down after its service provider, Hargray, ran a scheduled upgrade around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, Buxser said.

The stations distribute their signals from the company's studios in Westburry Park in Bluffton via transmitters off Ulmer Road. The scheduled upgrade somehow "affected that pipeline," he said.

"Their technicians and our technicians have been working hard on it all morning," he said. "But here we are coming up on 14 hours."

In the meantime, radio listeners can listen to stations 104.9 and 103 via live streaming by going to those stations websites. The company's newest station, 106.5, does not have live streaming yet.

Buxser said he appreciated listeners' patience and expressed frustration over not being able to fix the problem himself.

"This has just been an unfortunate series of events," he said.

Follow reporter Mindy Lucas on Twitter at twitter.com/MindyatIPBG.

This story was originally published December 1, 2015 at 2:48 PM with the headline "Update: 3 area radio stations off air Tuesday."