[BC] Radio engineering not a profession - 50 kW Vs. 2 Watts

[nakayle at gmail.com]

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 9:58 PM, Mike McCarthy <Towers at mre.com> wrote:

> I think the FCC's mindset is that broadcast is professional activity and
> the licensee is already knowledgeable enough to retain properly trained
> staff.  OTOH, amateur operations answer to no one but the operator them
> self, there is no financial risk at stake, and there was/is no objective
> threshold to judge the applicant's skills and knowledge other than through
> testing.
>
> Makes perfect sense to me.
>
> MM
>
>
Well this doesn't appear to be working too well to me- at least not with
many small market stations.

A few years ago I was offered a job getting a local AM half-way working- I
say "half-way" because in talking with the manager it was clear his goal was
to spend as little as possible to keep the thing on the air and functioning
enough to sell time.  In my brief inspection I saw numerous problems-
including obvious technical violations which he brushed off with total
apathy.

The sad thing is that there are probably hundreds of small town managers
like this now with little knowledge or regard for FCC R&R.  At least in the
old days when you had someone with hard-earned blue-paper hanging on the
wall, you had someone who's first priority was seeing to it  that the
station operated in a legal and technicality competent manor. And back then
managers had respect for engineers and didn't consider them just appliance
repairmen you call in when your radio station is broke.

 - Nat Kayle