Wednesday morning's bomb scare happened right outside KTVL-TV but the station's news reporters had no way to tell the story.

KTVL's entire staff had to evacuate the building when a man later identified as Mark Allen Dickey of Cave Junction parked his van in front of the building. His strange behavior led many to believe he might have a bomb.

News staffers had several video cameras, but no way to transmit from the cameras to the control room inside the building, and nobody inside the building to get the story on the air, said Gordon Godfrey, KTVL's news director.

"Never in my television career have I seen this happen," said Godfrey, a veteran of 32 years in TV.

"There's not much you can do" in a situation like that, he said.

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The incident also forced Garth and Rosemary Harrington to pull the plug on their popular talk-radio show on KCMX about 7:25 a.m. The Harringtons broadcast from a building adjacent to the TV station.

KCMX is one of six stations in the Radio Medford group, which all work in the same building. All the others were broadcasting taped music that allowed them to continue to transmit without interruption, said Joe Mussio, market manager for Radio Medford.

Mussio and KTVL station manager Kingsley Kelly said keeping everyone safe was their primary goal.

Kelly said KTVL stayed connected to the feed from CBS when staff left the building at around 7:20 a.m. Viewers saw the network's regularly scheduled "Early Show" until 9 a.m.

Then things got strange.

KTVL normally shifts to another source to broadcast "The 700 Club" at 9 a.m. With no one inside the station to make the change, the CBS feed continued. Unfortunately, CBS uses the 9 to 10 a.m. hour to transmit promotional materials to affiliated stations across the United States. Channel 10 viewers saw promos for local stations in Peoria, Ill., and Grand Rapids, Mich., among others.

At 10 a.m. CBS returned to national programming. Local viewers saw "The Price is Right" while a SWAT team surrounded Dickey, and "The Young and the Restless" rolled at 11 a.m. while the standoff continued outside the station.

The regular local noon news was replaced by the CBS feed. Viewers saw more promotional materials, bars of color and an occasional black screen.

Dickey surrendered to police at around noon. When KTVL staff returned to the building, they went on air to tell viewers why they had seen such unusual programming.

They also answered phone calls from viewers wondering what was going on.

"As soon as we explained, they were not just empathetic, but concerned," Kelly said.

He said KTVL has developed contingency plans for covering major local news events, and could broadcast from its transmitter site if its building were destroyed, but it would take some time to make those arrangements.

"We're used to these stories being about someone else," he said. "When it happens to you, you have to think differently."

Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492 or e-mail:bkettler@mailtribune.com