The SBE joins the Heartland Media Conference to present an Ennes Workshop on Tuesday, May 5
The Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) joins the partnership with the Minnesota, North and South Dakota Broadcasters Association to produce the Heartland Media Conference, May 5-6 in Fargo ND at the Radisson Blu Fargo, 201 5th St., N, Fargo, ND 58102.
Join us on Tuesday, May 5 from 1 pm – 4 pm CT for the SBE Ennes Workshop. Take a look at our excellent line-up:
Calculating Reliability for Broadcast Engineers, Fred Baumgartner, “Retired” Broadcast Engineer
No one wants down time. But highly reliable systems come at a cost and that cost is driven by design and environment. We can calculate the reliability of a system with some simple mathematics.
When you propose a project or expense that is meant to reduce down time, it often is useful to present this as competing costs – the cost of doing nothing versus the cost of investing in reliability – and the cost of down time. What does it mean to have 5-nines (99.999%) of availability versus 2-nines (99%)? A big part of broadcast engineering is keeping things running. This is how to calculate the return on investment for various design approaches. Your gut feeling might be far from reality for some subtle and not very obvious reasons. Never again will you have to pull a number out of the air or guess — you will be able to support your decisions with real numbers.
This is a skill and a mindset that every broadcast engineer can benefit from. And the rules are few and the math fairly basic.
Why Worry About Your Air Chain, Mike Pappas, Field Engineer and VP of Business Development, Orban
Over the past several years, I have reviewed AM and FM air chains, in large and small markets, and have found a plethora of problems. Not only do these problems negatively impact audio quality, they can affect Nielsen PPM encodability!
Air chains inevitably degrade over time, and there are many reasons. Equipment, formats and other conditions change. Analog to digital conversions (or digital to analog) happen. “Stuff” may have been added to the air chain over the years, and you might not even be aware of its existence. PPM encoding and EAS may have been inserted in less-than-ideal locations… and there’s also the issue of mic processing, mic selection and, of course, board operators.
“But,” you say, “the air chain is working, so why should I worry about it? After all, I have other things to worry about.” Well, what if your station’s audio sounds bad? Have you listened to it carefully?
I’ve found some interesting problems over the years, and many are quite humorous. This talk will address:
1. How the problems were located
2. How a course of action was developed to resolve the problems
3. The actual resolutions to the problems
4. The result
Additionally, this talk will cover air chain “best practices” as well as “processing 101.”
It’s time to hear from the vendors! The leadership side of the industry is from a vendors perspective is a really interesting topic one you start looking from if from both the inside and outside of the top four or five markets. For example, DOE in major radio markets like LA can pretty much do as they please. Those same groups in Gainesville have a completely different role. Hear how vendors deal with each of these markets in quite a different way.
FCC Compliance for your Broadcast Facility, John George, Broadtech Services, Inc.
The presentation will focus on John’s years of experience as a broadcast engineer and ABIP Inspector. He will review the easy mistakes made in FCC filings and required record keeping for the broadcast facility, including EAS, tower lighting and the documents one should have their studio and transmitter sites.
Ennes Workshop attendees receive One Credit Category G by attending the entire workshop (4 sessions).
The cost for the Ennes Workshop is $25 and includes the day’s events, refreshments and Cinco De Mayo Happy Hour after the workshop.
Click here to learn more to register for the conference! Hotel rooms at the Radisson Blu Fargo can be booked in the room block here
Questions?
Contact Education Director Cathy Orosz at corosz@sbe.org.
Special Thanks to these sponsors: GatesAir, Radio Gearheads, R&J Broadcasting and Visit Fargo Moorhead
