SBE TO BRING FULL AGENDA TO NATIONAL MEETING

The Society of Broadcast Engineers no longer has a standalone national meeting.

Rather, it piggybacks its national business on a selected annual meeting of one of its 112 state or regional chapters.

This year, the host is Chapter 20/Pittsburgh, which is gathering in two weeks at the Pittsburgh ExpoMart and Radisson Hotel in Monroeville, just west of the city.

The national board will meet on Wednesday (Oct. 10) as will the national frequency coordination and certification committees. The following day, the national will hand out its annual awards at dinner.

Such national elements will overlay a substantial chapter meeting, which includes a full day of technical papers and nearly 60 exhibitors—from AEQ to WireCAD.

The meeting will also mark a change in leadership. Barry Thomas, VP of engineering—radio, Lincoln Financial Media, will succeed Chriss Scherer, editor of Radio magazine, as president.

As one of his final duties, Scherer spoke to TVNEWSDAY about the SBE and some of the efforts that go beyond its basic educational and certification roles, notably insuring a smooth BAS transition and an effective EAS implementation.

An edited transcript follows:

How’s the society doing?

I’d say overall the health is as good as it’s ever been as far as just raw membership numbers. They are steady. We have about 5,400 members. We’re not seeing huge growth, but we’re not seeing any shrinkage either. It’s been fairly stable the last several years.

Are you getting membership from outside the broadcasting industry?

There are some. There’s been a blurring of the lines between traditional radio and TV and other outlets. It’s all just media of some kind, even the guy who does live sound at his church.

And some of our core members come from production houses. Like I said, the line is being blurred or even disappearing between “I’m a broadcast engineer” and “I’m a live sound designer” or whatever the case might be.

I still have the impression that it’s still basically an RF organization. Is that correct?

I don’t happen to know off the top of my head how many of our members would classify themselves as directly involved in RF versus production. My gut feeling is that there’s probably a higher percentage involved in RF in some way. It may not be high-power transmitters. It may be low-power stuff, but it’s probably a safe assumption to say that most people are involved in RF in some way.

What’s the TV/radio split?

We’re looking at roughly 60 percent of the members being involved in TV in some way, so there is 40 percent in radio. Fifteen years ago, it was almost an even split between TV and radio. There are fewer radio engineers out there today and that’s reflected in our membership.

What are the TV issues and initiatives that SBE is involved in right now? What are your hot topics?                              

The transition of the 2 GHz [BAS] band is on the minds of just about all of our TV members. In some markets, that’s already taken place. In many others, it’s still in process. The SBE has certainly been involved in that in different capacities along the way. [Editor’s note: The government is taking away some of the BAS spectrum that broadcasters use for ENG transmissions from the field. In exchange for some of that spectrum, Sprint Nextel has agreed to upgrade the microwave gear of every TV station from analog to digital.]

We’ve been acting as sort of a conduit for information and helping to arrange meetings within markets to help plan the transition. That’s a big area for us in general.

More broadly, protecting the BAS band, working with newcomers and neighbors, has always been at the forefront of SBE’s activities.

There are other licensees—AWS, the wireless service guys—who are getting spectrum very close to us, who are sort of touching on a few of the bands. We’re starting to receive some inquiries on how to best work together as happy neighbors in this limited spectrum.

There is also the looming DTV deadline. That’s certainly something we’re aware of and keeping an eye on, although it’s more important to other groups like the ATSC. We kind of let them handle it and we’re there as needed. It’s not on the forefront of what we’re working on directly.

The SBE has also been involved in EAS issues as FEMA and other government agencies have been talking about how do we update the system to make the most effective use of emergency warnings.

The EAS rules are under review again and there are a lot of questions that are being asked about the whole rolling CAP [Common Alerting Protocol]. We’re certainly working on that. That’s something that both sides, TV and radio, are going to have to make some kind of an adjustment for. We don’t know exactly what yet. There are a lot of unknowns that were part of the rulemaking.

Let’s talk about the BAS transition a little more. That was supposed to have been wrapped up this month. But Sprint Nextel has asked the FCC for another 29 months. Why is it taking so long and what can the SBE do to accelerate the process?

As far as the delay, the short answer is that it was a much larger project than was originally considered. On paper, it looked like such a simple concept, right? You have an existing band plan, you have a proposed band plan, fine. We’ll just come in and replace your equipment and we’re done.

One of the big problems is all the existing equipment is different. Everyone had a box one or a box two. They had a whole bunch of different variations and flavors. It wasn’t as easy as, “Oh you had the green one? You now get a blue one. You had a red one? You now get a yellow one.” It wasn’t a simple one-for-one swap.

Further, every market is different. Some markets use a home plan method where there are a handful of BAS frequencies, channel slots if you will. The ABC affiliate tends to stick on the first choice and the CBS guy uses number two and the Fox guy uses number three and so on.

Obviously nobody owns them, but we sort of had that understanding. And, again, every market is different, whether it’s big or small. Some use it with greater effect than others. And, of course, in a large market, you have a whole lot of users where a home channel plan like that doesn’t really work all that well because there are just too many users for the number of frequencies available to them.

What can you do to get this thing moving a little bit faster or is 29 months what it is?

It’s kind of what it is now. In fact when Sprint approached the FCC to say it would like an extension on time, the SBE along with the NAB and MSTV supported the request and said, yeah, this is okay.

The early parts of the program were a little rocky and there was some learning of who they are and who we are and how this is all going to work. A lot of that has been smoothed out and all the players involved have gotten to know each other. From what we can see, everything appears to be on the table. There’s nothing sort of funny going on behind the scenes.

At the end of the day, are broadcasters going to find that they have as much capacity for ENG as they had before the transition?

The number of actual channels stays the same. They just become slightly narrower.

But digital is supposed to take care of that, proving the same level of service within the narrower channels, right?

Right, because we’re now using a digital modulation, you’re able to get more into that smaller space with just as much efficiency, if not even more, just because of the digital advantage of overcoming noise floor and some of those problems.

So we’re not really losing anything. I mean you’re confident in that?

Right. I believe so.

There is a much bigger battle being waged in Washington over broadcast spectrum—the white spaces issue. NAB and MSTV are resisting efforts to open up vacant TV channels to unlicensed wireless devices. How come SBE isn’t in there?

Actually we are. We’re just not as vocal as the NAB or MSTV. The main channel issues have been the primary concern of those two organizations, while we’ve been focused more on auxiliary service efforts.

But we’re not ignoring the main channel stuff because it does kind of come back to us. The unused television channels that Congress thinks means "wasted" are not truly unused. They’re unused as main channels, but most of them are being used for wireless microphones, IFB and other wireless communications for media production—a lot of other things that they don’t see.

And, of course, once the DTV transition is complete, we’re going to lose the top twenty some TV channels. So there will be that much more demand by secondary users for the unused spectrum that is left.

MSTV and the NAB have talked to us and have asked for our support. In fact, that’s a matter that we’re talking about right now.

What specifically have they asked you to do?

Just sign on. They’re working on new methods of getting the message across to the FCC and to Congress. They want support from our members whether it’s in the form of writing letters or perhaps making visits with them to the FCC or to members of Congress and so on.

Why the piggyback approach?

Back in the mid 90s it just became so difficult, so crowded to have all of these different broadcast related conventions in the fall—SBE, SMPTE, the NAB Radio Show, RTNDA. All had these separate shows. SMPTE and the radio show are still in the fall, but RTNDA now, of course is co-located with the NAB in the spring and we just decided back then that it made sense to co-locate with some of our regional chapters.

For us, it’s a good chance to visit some of these regional events and it helps them in their promotion because they get to say the national meeting is being held in conjunction with their regional or local. It makes for a bigger event overall and we can draw some people from around the country.

The chapter will see an uptick of attendance because of our board and our award winners and there are some people that follow us around no matter where it is.

How much of an uptick?

They probably expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 400 people.

Anything special planned for this year’s meeting?

We’re going to kick off—successfully, I hope—a webcast, available to anyone, any of our members particularly. It will originate from the studios of the Sinclair station in Pittsburgh and is set for Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 8 o’clock in the evening. It will be about an hour long, hosted by me. Barry Thomas, president elect, will be leading the event. John [Poray, executive director] will also be there as will, I believe, our general counsel and a couple of our board members.

It’s a chance for national to communicate directly to our members, some gathered at chapter meetings. We’re planning on dedicating at least half of the hour, if not a little more, to questions and answers.

So how do people tap into the webcast?

There will be a link to the stream on the SBE Web site that will also include information on how to pose questions. We’re currently planning on having telephone, instant message and e-mail to get questions from the field back to us in the studio.

Anything else?

There is one panel that we’re assembling for the Pittsburgh chapter as part of their session agenda—a past presidents panel where President Elect Thomas will appear with several past presidents, including me. We’re actually getting all the RSVPs together right now, but I believe we should have five or six at least.

Members will be able to ask the past presidents, gain their insight on the state of the society, the state of broadcasting, compare and contrast what they dealt with when they were presidents with what’s going on today.