Saturday, October 18, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Data overload injects 'sex' into sermon

CEDAR CITY, Utah -- With millions of the faithful around the world listening to broadcasts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' General Conference, church Apostle M. Russell Ballard preached forcefully about Satan's threat to families and warned of the "pernicious evil" of the entertainment media.

Meanwhile, 225 miles to the south of the church's Salt Lake City headquarters, a Cedar City radio station airing conference coverage on a 24-second delay froze up just as Ballard reached the word "sex" in his sermon.

For 24 seconds, the electronically stalled Ballard said: "Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex ..."

It might have sounded like a morning-DJ prank, but employees at KSUB say it was only an overload of data streaming into the buffer system that caused the repeated message.

And, as it happens, the station's lone employee that Saturday had left the control booth for a drink of water.

The station's morning show co-hosts, Steve Miner and Dale Nelson, occasionally create on-air mischief, but Nelson told The Salt Lake Tribune that he wasn't laughing that Saturday.

He was listening at home and called the station in a panic.

Now, two weeks later, it's funny.

"I believe Ballard made his point," Miner chuckled from the control room of the 5,000-watt station on the outskirts of Cedar City.

The station, the first between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City when it went on the air in 1937, received no complaints from listeners. Nor has KSUB heard from the church about the incident.

The glitch was an honest mistake, said Jerold Johnson, general manager of MB Media Group in St. George, which owns the station.