Many, many, many projects over the years….
I certainly don’t like to sit around doing nothing (take this web site for example), but I have only recently (since about 2000) begun to memorialize the more significant events in my career through photographs and recorded details.
I used to note just the major projects I was doing for the station I was working for at the time, but now have widened the scope of my site to include projects outside of my W-2 occupation which I have done that may prove interesting or fun to others.
You can browse my individual blog entries, use the tag cloud on the right to find projects or entries by related topic or use my search tool if you are looking for something specific.
In the television business every broadcast engineering staff has a list of projects to complete each year (in addition to the regular maintenance of the existing facility), however these are a few events that rose above the level of “ordinary” for me and my engineering teams.
KHBS-TV/DT:
The second station where I served as Chief Engineer. Here is where I really cut my teeth in DTV/HDTV and had a good crew to help me move the station forward technically.
I worked at this station for just over 5 years. It was a VERY rewarding experience, however there is one infamous series of events that none of us will likely forget. That being the Arkansas/Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2000/2001. You can read all about it here.
KHOG-TV/DT:
KHOG is the high-power sister station to KHBS in the hyphenated Ft. Smith – Fayetteville – Springdale – Rogers market. Although the KHBS facility is where the core business was consolidated and all the department heads were located, the KHOG facility had a duplicate of many things, such as the studio, master control, newsroom, sales staff, maintenance crew, etc. It was a scaled down version of KHBS in many respects. It became more of an automated high-power satellite station during my tenure.
I am most proud of the expanded transmitter facilities that I designed and implemented in order to accommodate the addition of the DTV/HDTV equipment, transmitter and RF components.
WLWT-TV/DT:
A large market station that had located from a downtown Cincinnati location to the old Taft Broadcasting headquarters on Mt. Auburn overlooking downtown Cinci. A very nice facility, but running (at the time) some old legacy technology affecting its on-air look.
I worked at this station for a year and a half. I enjoyed working at this station while I was there for a number of reasons. It was an older building that had been gutted and renovated 5 years before I arrived in 2003 (I had actually visited the facility while it was under construction in 1998 and one of the integrators was delivering equipment). The building has a great view with lots of windows overlooking downtown Cincinnati, a waterfall (!) on one side of the 1st floor newsroom and LOTS of room for everyone and everything.
ION MEDIA NETWORKS:
The network group formerly known as PAX…. The largest broadcast television station group consisting of 97 O&O and affiliate stations across the country serving approximately 91 million homes which underwent a change in network identity and branding in Jan 2007…
In my humble opinion this has been a welcome change as the old Pax TV brand and programming mission only served an extremely small segment of the viewing public (as evidenced by the ratings) and was lampooned by the likes of Mad TV. In addition, the old business model had the PAX network’s local station master control equipment and personnel co-located in a partnered station, usually an NBC affiliate, with offices for some of the staff across town in many cases.
The new ION Media Network is definitely on the upswing in desirable content, business alliances, viewership and profits. ION is also the organizer of the Open Mobile Ventures Corporation (OMVION) in an effort to bring broadcasters together and focused in the mobile video/datacasting business.
KPIX/KBCW -TV:
In 2008 I began work at this news station in San Francisco on Battery Street and it is a busy place. As a CBS Owned & Operated station it was part of an interconnected news network with a constantly moving fleet of news vehicles covering news all over the SF Bay Area. With major league baseball, football and basketball teams, Silicon Valley to the South, Oakland to the East and huge swaths of wine country to the North there was no shortage of events to cover and major projects to maintain a competitive edge in the market.
This station used seven remote ENG sites, a remote TVRO facility in the East Bay along with the main transmitters for the two stations at the iconic Sutro Tower facility. Since I was the Chief Engineer with a lot of experience with RF and attended several factory transmitter schools I was one of only a couple people experienced enough to handle our transmitter projects and maintain those high-voltage, high-power RF systems.
KRNV/KRXI/KNSN-TV
At the start of 2017 I took an opportunity to work for a consolidated station facility in Reno, Nevada. The appeal of working in Reno was that there is no state income tax, far less traffic and a shorter commute as well as affordable housing allowing my wife and I to buy a nice home instead of renting endlessly in the SF Bay Area.
These stations, despite being in a smaller market size, have an enormous amount of events to support and broadcast, from the Reno Artown events each year, to the large number of local sporting events that the stations carry. The KNSN station is a sports branded station that evolved from a station formerly called KAME which mostly aired stale, also-ran programming. The dozens upon dozens of local high school and semi-pro games aired both live and pre-recorded gives that station something more topical and fresh for viewers that didn’t exist before.
The KRXI station is a Fox network affiliate and the KRNV station is an NBC network affiliate. In addition to the expected high-profile programming those networks offer they are both active local news stations that we support out of the same facility.
In addition to the three main transmitter sites on different mountain tops, there are also three remote ENG receive sites as well as multiple translator sites around northwestern Nevada we must maintain.