This all explains a lot.

I guess I'm lucky because the department that patrols my area is on broadcastify, however maybe 10 times a year the scanner will go down for a couple hours, and maybe even a full night, but it's always back up, and there have also been a few times where I will be listening to a high pressure situation such as police responding to shooting, or searching for suspects who just hopped out of a stolen car, and suddenly right in the height of the action the scanner will suddenly go down for 10 minutes and then be right back up....

I've been paying the $12 every 180 days to dig into archives, like if I come home and find cops all over my street, I will go back into broadcastify and pull up the original call which is really cool.

I probably do need to buy my own physical scanner eventually.