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

[Rich Wood]

------ At 09:27 PM 5/2/2008, nakayle at gmail.com wrote: -------

>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.

You must be in a different industry than I am. I've been doing this 
for a very long time and always heard engineers complain about 
management not respecting them. I don't think the piece of paper made 
a bit of difference. If you find a station operating illegally and 
there's no money to fix it properly, how did that piece of paper make 
it possible? I also question how many of those blue pieces of paper 
were "hard earned" when there were so many 90 day wonders cranked out 
by correspondence schools.

I'm willing to bet there are as many very competent engineers today 
as there were then. They may not be in radio, anymore, because 
flipping burgers pays more in some markets and equipment is automated 
and much more reliable than years ago. We don't need as many when one 
engineer can handle an 84 station cluster at the same pay scale. Also 
realize the FCC really cares only about fleeting expletives that 
bring in large amounts of cash with minimal effort. The FCC is now 
doing what it was never chartered to do. As I always understood it 
the FCC was to deal with technical issues and not get involved in programming.

Rich