[SBE] Industry retirement situation

[Mike Langner]

Hello, it's me, Mike Langner again !

TV's thinly staffed in our medium market, the
most recent move by one of the TV stations was
to have the engineering staff start running
cameras for the newscasts. Good for the Bottom
Line in the short term, which is today's metric.

Then there's radio --

When I retired from this medium market a few years
ago, for 8 radio stations and a synchronous booster,
we had -

One CE (that's me) 24 hour on-call
One RF Supervisor  24 hour on-call
One IT Specialist (had his hands full with computers)
One Remote(s) Coordinator (not really technical!)
One Webmaster (not really engineering)
One Half-Time Studio Tech (not available on-call)

That's it!

Eight stations, including 3 AM DA's,
50,000, 5,000, and 1,000 watts, 
5 full power FM on a 10,000 foot mountain
and one AM synchronous booster 60 miles away
sharing a tower with two other AM's. Intermod?

And, Gary, this is typical.

Small markets in our state have one contract engineer
for every 8 to 12 (or more) stations.

Y'know why the young folks aren't interested in
our venerable career field?  Tell some guy in
a warm office not on 24 hour call about the
joy of pager, cell phone, mountaintop FM and
swampy AM sites, accessible only by an engineer-
supplied personal 4WD vehicle.

Oh yes, DialNorm.  Great idea, but not what the
industry wants.  Set your control at 29 as
recommended, and TV audio will be pretty
uniform, have lots of dynamic range, and
sound remarkably good.

But not LOUD!  Advertisers want loud, not
dynamic range.  So, we get loud, louder,
and loudest.  The market is driven not
by viewers, but by advertisers.  End
of the value of DialNorm!!

Mike/
_________


-----Original Message-----
From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org]On Behalf Of Bill
Burckhard
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 1:38 PM
To: 'sbe member discussion mail list'
Subject: Re: [SBE] Industry retirement situation


In reply to Gary; No Stinking Way.

William R Burckhard
445 South 24th Street West
Billings, MT. 59102
(406)652-4743
billb at khmt.com
www.yourbigsky.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of Gary
Stewart
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 1:27 PM
To: sbe member discussion mail list
Subject: [SBE] Industry retirement situation

Maybe the SBE has our birth years in its records and can run a report on
what percentage of members will reach a certain age in each of the next
10 years.

I know we have been thinking about it here.  We have 6 traditional
technical employees of varying involvement and specializations within TV
engineering. (2 fewer than 2 years ago) (22 years ago we had 4 just
taking care of studio cameras) Our weak point, of course, is IT.

Our current ages are: 63, 62, 60, 57, 51, 50

The nice thing is that of the two youngest, one is RF and the other
isn't. With technology moving the way it is, maybe they are all we will
need in 6 years.  Maybe by the time they retire the receptionist can do
it.

The only area at our station where the number of engineers is the same
as it was 22 years ago is RF. I think our radio brothers can't say that,
at least at the city wide level.  Do very small market radio stations
still each have an RF engineer?

Gary Stewart
Cornerstone TV


-----Original Message-----
From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of k7cr
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 11:29 PM
To: sbe member discussion mail list
Subject: Re: [SBE] Discussion topics

Fred posed this question -


> Are there any figures on what percentage of current SBE members are

> within five years of retirement?  Ten years?  It goes by rather

> quickly...and then what?


This issue goes well beyond the matter of where SBE will find it's new 
members.
I am within 5 years of retirement (my choice) and as I look over my
shoulder
I find no-one chomping at the bit to take my job...much less even apply
for 
it.

No one wants to get dirty, put on chains on all 4 and head up the
mountain
in the middle of the night to work on something analog with 8kv on the 
inside.

When I started in this business back in 1961 there were plenty of young
Hams that were eager to apply their skills to things in a broadcast 
operation...
but today those folks are old too.

Largely broadcasting, Radio and TV, have become computer based
operations
with the bit of analog tossed in just to rattle the minds of those that 
think that
15 volts is high-voltage and who are totally confused by schematics.
In 
many
ways these folks are disconnected from the world that we knew and, in
some
cases, continue to operate within.

I could go on and on -

My $.02

Clay Freinwald, K7CR
Member of the Board 
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