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iHeart cuts engineers

Syfy said:
Do you even work in radio?
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Dumb question, Kelly has been a station owner, long time engineer and currently with a major engineering operation in the DC area.
 
Love when they do this and later say, "Oh how can we get the next generation interested in broadcast engineering?"

There will be a day the last engineer leaves and I'll just laugh. The CEOs still get their bonuses but the rest can just suck-it.
 
TheBigA said:
One of my best friends is a technical writer and speaker who travels all over the country doing seminars in new technologies. He speaks every year at the NAB and CES. I have friends in AES and other technical groups who try to keep members up to date on new technology. Every new advancement is another potential new job. The resources exist more in engineering than in any other part of the broadcasting business. At the same time, I know a guy who lost his job for only one reason: He didn't know how to edit video for the station social media site. That's like saying you can only edit audio with splicing tape and a razor blade.
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You're absolutely correct. I have good friends and even chief engineers who have worked for me over the years that never grew in their knowledge or openness to learn new technologies, yet they would always attend NAB and hang around transmitter vendor booths. 'It's fine the way it is'. These are the same who would prefer to just work at transmitter sites, avoiding interaction with station management or non technical staff.

Most station management that have advanced to corporate leadership come from sales. They don't understand, nor should they, how a transmitter works. IP is changing the industry, allowing for much more cost-efficient, reduced capital operations and increased reliability. Some traditional engineers have allowed the Gen-Z guy that installed the new traffic software, plus allowing talent to work from home through an Internet connection, to become more important than a traditional chief, because they're providing tools that manage the revenue source. Over the years many engineers believed they were somehow insulated from their employer being a business, and that their job is to just keep the station on the air. They adopt that mindset at their own peril.
 
kenglish said:
I remember a time when even the smallest stations had a couple of engineers on staff, and knew of several good ones they could call when in a bind.
Now, I worry about engineers going for days at a time without sleep, driving hundreds of miles in the dark or in very bad weather, between sites when there are multiple "fires".
God forbid, a solo engineer grabs a beer on what once was a "day off", and then gets called out. That's a quick DUI in some places.
I know there used to be a guy in Hawaii who contracted most engineering services there. He had a pretty good staff.
I wonder if the contracts in many markets might band together in one shop, have themselves some iron-clad agreements, and maybe vacations and a pension plan?
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Transmitters back in the day had to be monitored constantly. Now with solid state, frequency agile, and remote capabilities it made no sense to keep several engineers on staff.

With the next phase of elecctronics and technology (except in a diaster or crisis) the failure rate of transmitters and transmission facilities of FM stations is almost zero. Studios now have on wire hookups with servers, and will move over to the cloud.

That is progress.
 
DavidEduardo said:
These will be contract engineers. They are going to pay less or by the hour or project, and the contract engineers will have to pay their own medical and FICA. They will also have to drive to adjacent markets. Overall, not a good prospect for the future.

It's mostly from executives with no engineering or technical background or knowledge who think that automated stations can repair themselves. We will end up with HAL running the stations.
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Sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
 
Groove1670 said:
With the next phase of elecctronics and technology (except in a diaster or crisis) the failure rate of transmitters and transmission facilities of FM stations is almost zero. Studios now have on wire hookups with servers, and will move over to the cloud.

That is progress.
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Exactly. I've been working quite a bit with a cloud-based studio system, where there is no local file storage. You could literally run a station manually (if needed) from an IPad at your local Starbucks.
 
Anton P said:
www.radioworld.com

Reports: iHeartMedia Makes Cuts to Engineering Staff - Radio World

Its move to regionalization reportedly leads to reductions in engineering
www.radioworld.com www.radioworld.com

39 Engineers cut.
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From what I'm hearing, iHeart is keeping one regional engineer to cover (in most cases) roughly three States. Regular maintenance and quick on-call stuff will be contractors. Installations and catastrophic emergency matters will be handled by what amounts to a 'tiger-team', who will swoop in and take care of larger issues.
 
Kelly A said:
Exactly. I've been working quite a bit with a cloud-based studio system, where there is no local file storage. You could literally run a station manually (if needed) from an IPad at your local Starbucks.
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We still have to recognize the elephant in the room (Hint: he is gray, has four big legs and a trunk) which is the present-status inability to make a profit from free streamed audio content containing music due to the music licensing burden.

While podcasts can be profitable, it is one out of every thousand or so that truly makes any money and the field is more crowded every day.

Music streams that do not charge money and/or those that charge and allow actually music choices can't make money off of non-broadcast offerings yet.
 
One regional engineer for three states? That would be about 20 or less....for how many stations?
I can see the divorce lawyers salivating right now.
 
DavidEduardo said:
We still have to recognize the elephant in the room (Hint: he is gray, has four big legs and a trunk) which is the present-status inability to make a profit from free streamed audio content containing music due to the music licensing burden.

While podcasts can be profitable, it is one out of every thousand or so that truly makes any money and the field is more crowded every day.

Music streams that do not charge money and/or those that charge and allow actually music choices can't make money off of non-broadcast offerings yet.
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In my example of running a station via I-Pad, this is an actual radio station, not a podcast. All the music, spots, promos, "audio console", traffic software, audio processing, automation software, sales tools, everything except a final limiter at the transmitter, is virtually located within the AWS Cloud. The STL to the transmitter site(s) is nothing more than a peered Internet connection.

If you can find Internet access, you can run the entire station manually from an I-Pad as needed. Other than transmitter sites, all the traditional infrastructure is completely virtual. The only reason one would run the station manually, is during an NFL game this upcoming season.
 
Glad we all had backup systems in SLC. We basically had no internet in our market since yesterday afternoon. They are now saying that 100K+ Comcast customers lost service due to some sort of "vandalism", which they haven't disclosed. They finally gave an address, which looks to be someone's flower bed in front of their house.
The resultant domino-effect made everyone's service a mess, with problems still showing up this morning.
 
Kelly A said:
In my example of running a station via I-Pad, this is an actual radio station, not a podcast. All the music, spots, promos, "audio console", traffic software, audio processing, automation software, sales tools, everything except a final limiter at the transmitter, is virtually located within the AWS Cloud. The STL to the transmitter site(s) is nothing more than a peered Internet connection.

If you can find Internet access, you can run the entire station manually from an I-Pad as needed. Other than transmitter sites, all the traditional infrastructure is completely virtual. The only reason one would run the station manually, is during an NFL game this upcoming season.
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I'm aware of that, and have actually been involved in some aspects. My question, though, is that until there is a point at which Internet radio programming with commercials can be done in a way that is both better (making hearing advertising acceptable and bearable) and inexpensive (allowing a profit margin) radio stations can't move fully to new media. Keeping the over the air facility viable is still the only way to be profitable with music programming due to the license fees on streams.
 
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Kelly A said:
In my example of running a station via I-Pad, this is an actual radio station, not a podcast. All the music, spots, promos, "audio console", traffic software, audio processing, automation software, sales tools, everything except a final limiter at the transmitter, is virtually located within the AWS Cloud. The STL to the transmitter site(s) is nothing more than a peered Internet connection.

If you can find Internet access, you can run the entire station manually from an I-Pad as needed. Other than transmitter sites, all the traditional infrastructure is completely virtual. The only reason one would run the station manually, is during an NFL game this upcoming season.
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What happens when the transmitter site loses it's internet connection(s)?
 
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