[BC] The wrong way to deal with tech budgets

[Alex Hartman]

It may be a label, but having been in the field for just under 10 years, gone are the days of a very highly skilled guy who lives at the TX to maintain compliance and keeping the station on the air. With the advent of computers becoming more and more commonplace, plastic taking the place of metal, china manufacturing everything from light bulbs to amplifier assemblies, face it, the world has gotten cheap. This stuff will break a lot quicker, it will decay quicker, and need just a hint more TLC than in years past. And there's no pride in radio anymore either. They're snot nosed 20 somethings that think they're gods gift to the airwaves, they could care less about pounding on a $30k console, or throwing a pizza on the VoxPro controller, or (yes this did happen) put a fist through the touchscreen because it played a song... it may have been the "wrong" song, but it did it's job.

Us as broadcast engineers have to clean up after them when they pull stuff like this, and the GM doesn't care because it's all about ratings, matter of fact, the axe falls on my head because i didn't replace the monitor fast enough!  The stereotype exists not because we're skilled technicians with degrees, but that's the way the radio personnel sees us. It's not a bad stereotype. If you think you're better than calling yourself a glorified janitor, by all means, but putting a different label on it doesn't make it any different. I can call myself VP of engineering, it sounds impressive, until you get that college kid shadowing you on career day and you really just review logs, reply to a couple emails and MAYBE run a wire or 3...

On the other side of the coin, you have the ability to design absolute works of art, creative freedom to come up with a solution to a unique problem (i know i have), etc. And you get to be in a career where not many people have been or are going that allows some serious flexibility as far as working schedules. Believe me, no 2 days are the same around here. One of the things I absolutely love about the job is the changing pace and challenges that come up daily.

The downside to a lot of this *is* the "cheap" factor. Because it IS cheap, means it gets replaced or repaired more often. Which, after the second repair, makes you look incompetent to the GM because "it's been repaired twice". When you and I both know that X device got dropped out of an airplane when the PD thought it'd be really cool on the air. (again, happened) It's rare to find a GM who understands this fact, and while the engineering staff tend to be realists and take things in stride, everyone else sees it as an emergency.

"Lack of planning on your part does not necessarily constitute an emergency on my part."

But don't fear, as i've told several PDs, "my job is safe, they need someone to fix the computer that will take over your job next week".  :)  So yes, at it's most basic fundamental level, the broadcast engineer, no matter how innovative and creative you are, still has to sweep floors, change air filters, and replace fan belts. (I even have my boilers license because of an air compressor on the coax! Go figure...) Of course, if you're at a cluster that can afford more than one guy in engineering, you have minions for that, and the reason why a lot of us can sit and reply to emails all day. :)

--
Alex Hartman

 

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Aaron Savage <radiosavagelists at gmail.com> wrote:
>This really stood out to me.  It is that statement that makes owners
>argue why they should pay Broadcast Engineers next to nothing in some
>areas.  Some of us do have degrees in electronics, IT, computer
>science, electrical engineering, management, and related fields.
>Please don't label all of use just because that is your viewpoint.

>-Aaron Savage

>On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 10:37 PM, Alex Hartman <goober at goobe.net> wrote:

>> Broadcast engineers are merely glorified janitors with a hint of specialty (ie, we know where to hit the damn thing to turn it on again!).
>>