|
|
By Paul Thurst, on December 29th, 2011
This time of year is when we all sit back and asess things that we did in the past 365 or so days. It is called reflection, which is just a civilian term for SWR (Standing Wave Ratio).
Thus, I though I would take a little time and make a few observations about the business, my part in it, and this blog.
1. The business of Radio:
Let us be honest, Radio is not what is used to be. Many times, what it used to be was somewhat of a free for all, wheeler dealer radio station owners cutting corners and making do with less than optimum equipment and staff. And trade, lots and lots of trade. Only in large metropolitan areas did radio stations make enough money to throw it around, but sometimes not even then. Radio was by no means a huge money making operation and therefore, those that worked in mostly it did it as a labor of love. That may or may not have come across on the air. By far, the funnest station I ever listened to was run from a closet, with a sound reinforcement board and the program directors CD collection. What made it so much fun was they had nothing to loose, there were no restraints placed on the staff. Once that on air enthusiasm translated to ratings, then to revenue, the magic was gone and they were just another radio station filling a spot on the dial.
The radio business has fully transitioned from a fun, seat of the pants entertainment operation to a mega money making corporate mentality under the control of mostly non-entertainment types. Even those stations owned by smaller group owners are forced to rely on the tactics developed by the big two in order to stay in business.
Group owners will continue to extract money in whatever way they can until the money train runs off the rails. Then, radio will be replaced by something less.
2. Radio Engineering:
Engineering will continue to grow smaller, with more emphasis on computers, networking, and IT infrastructure. The future distribution of music and program material will take the form of streaming (live events), pod casts (specialty shows) and subscription services. Over the air free radio will become less and less relevant as younger “listeners” trend toward new media. The idea of listeners may be archaic in lieu of “subscribers” or “users.” Thus, in order to remain relevant, broadcast engineers are going to have to keep their skill sets current. I would recommend to anyone getting into the business to get current with routers, routing tables, Cisco equipment and whatnot. The cloud is coming and will rain on all those not adjusted to the new “broadcasting” reality.
3. My part in the business:
A somewhat superannuated broadcast engineer who’s skill set lies mostly within the RF and heavy duty electrical areas, I am going back to college in January. Cicso Network Administrator is the degree I am shooting for, for that is where the local jobs, both in and out of broadcasting will be. Network Administrators are going to be the backbone of cloud computing, those that can configure routing tables will be desired.
That being said, I continue to be involved with larger RF projects and transmitter work. It is fun for me, most of the time. Having to drive two hours,one way on Christmas Eve to fix a backup transmitter, not so much, but those situations tend to be the exception, rather than the rule.
All in all, it is great fun to press the high voltage on button, not knowing if the transmitter will cycle on normally, or put on some type of display.
4. The blog:
This little thing we have here has been fun. I get good response to most articles. I welcome all the comments and the off line e-mails that come my way. My original intent, which is to provoke thought and dialog, remains unchanged. This year, I have delved into areas not covered by the trade magazines, but do have at least some bearing on radio or radio related arts. To that end, there have been several negative responses, which is fine. I don’t pretend to know everything, if you know more, then by all means, speak up. By and large, however, the majority of responses continue to be positive.
I continue to grow the overseas audience, with roughly 36% of the page views coming from non US IP addresses. Persons from The UK, followed by Canada, Netherlands, Australia and Germany are the top five non-US readers of this blog.
So, I will continue to post about things in the coming year. If any of you have any suggestions or requests, shoot me an email of leave a comment.
In the mean time, have a Happy New Year!
By Paul Thurst, on September 26th, 2011
With special thanks to our sponsors, regular readers and those just dropping in for a look see, I was able to buy a new SLR camera. It took several months to pool my blog earnings, I had to redeem several thousand Amex rewards points and scrape together a little bit of loose change from the sofa cushions and get this:
 New Canon EOS Rebel T1i SLR camera To date, I have been using the camera on my HTC Android phone. For the price, it has done yeoman’s work and is always handy. That being said, there have been several instances where I have been disappointed by a blurry or poorly lit picture. Several times, this has occurred at transmitter sites or other locations where I will not be likely to return, thus the chance of getting a better shot at a later date is low. Other times, I have missed first time events; first time turning a transmitter on, first boot up of a fancy console, etc.
Pictures, videos, and diagrams are a very important part of this blog. I decided that if this is going to be a semi-serious endeavor I need to get some better equipment and stop loosing key shots to less than optimum equipment. The HTC Android is a smartphone, it does a good job as such. The camera and video recorder is a compromise at best.
With the new camera, I can get better close ups, better low light and generally improve the quality of the images in this blog. I am all about quality. I look forward to trying it out.
By Paul Thurst, on June 22nd, 2011
Happy birthday to us! I was looking through the past posts of this blog and found much of it still relevant today. There were some older video posts where the videos are no longer available on youtube, those were deleted.
I continue to look for subjects to blog about while keeping the subject matter pertinent to broadcast engineering or some aspect of radio in general. With so many things going on, this can be hard to do.
Here are a few stats:
- Average daily page views: 400
- Average unique visitors, daily: 240
- Average returning visitors, daily: 37
- RSS subscribers: 73
- Total posts: 323
- Total comments: 911
- Total $pam comments: 52,403
- Average number of comments per post: 2.8
- Average number of $pam comments per post: 162
Which brings me to this; I use an aggressive $pam filter. There is no way that I would be able to keep up with the number of junk comments received otherwise. If you have posted a legitimate comment and it doesn’t show up after a period of time, e-mail me and I’ll look into it. Chances are very good that some legitimate comments have been deleted by the $pam filter, for which I apologize.
Many of my unique visitors come from Google searches which is strange considering it’s page rank is 0/10.
I continue to enjoy blogging about the everyday life of a broadcast engineer and thank all of my readers and subscribers for their interest. It is entertaining and enlightening to read all of your comments and e-mails. For as long as there is interest, the writing project will proceed.
By Paul Thurst, on March 25th, 2011
The New York Times wrestles with a New Media business model. I have been reading the NY times on line edition for years. I find their articles interesting and often more comprehensive than other media counterparts, even if I don’t necessarily agree with the point of view. When I got my Android phone, I downloaded the NYT mobile application and enjoyed reading up on the latest news as time permitted. It became part of my morning routine.
On March 28th, all of that will change. The NYT will put up a paywall, charging $15 to $35 per month for anyone going past a twenty article threshold.
I have no plans to subscribe to any of these plans. I will limit my NYT reading to the twenty articles per month and then get my news elsewhere. This goes to show, once something is given away for free, it becomes very hard to charge for it later on.
This is a problem that new media types, myself included, have yet to figure out; how to make money with it. This blog is a good example; I work away, trying to come up with original material or expound on other’s work from an in the trenches point of view. I have a core group of regular readers (thank you!) and quite a bit of search engine traffic just passing through. Every once in a while, I get a good link in from slash/dot, boing boing, or dig, but those are rare. Some small amounts of money are made here and there, but could I live off of this? No. It is a labor of love more than anything else. Something to keep my mind occupied while in between my children’s pickups and drop offs. This is good because otherwise a fair amount of trouble could ensue.
While I empathize with the New York Times, those rates seem a bit exorbitant for an online distribution system.
By Paul Thurst, on December 22nd, 2010
I have looked at my personal schedule, it is likely to be very light blog posting over the holidays as I am booked, booked solid I tell you. So, if I don’t get to say it, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Festivus, Happy Saturn Festival, Happy Druid dirt munching dancing naked under a full moon, or whatever it is you celebrate.
For my part, it has been an interesting year. It started out a little trepidus, what with my full time job being eliminated in January. I was fortunate to be re-employed part-time right away, many don’t get that luxury. Then, my wife returned to teaching full time, which made me, by necessity, a stay at home dad four days a week. There have been many changes, but in the end, everything has worked out rather well.
While at home, I have worked on the blog and other ways to earn a little extra money. I can say that I am genuinely surprised by the reception this blog gets, both in the comments and off line e-mails and phone calls. I have enjoyed interacting with other industry professionals and bystanders, and although I might not agree with everyone on every point, I respect you all and value your input. I have found that while my engineering work hours are reduced, the amount of raw material for blogging is also reduced. I have also found that 14-15 posts per month is the right balance between quantity and quality, with the later being foremost importance. For as long as I have quality raw material to work with, I will endeavor to write about, take pictures of, and research issues that involve radio broadcasting.
Next year will undoubtedly bring about more changes. I look forward to hearing from you and I wish you all well over the holidays and on into the New Year.
Paul
By Paul Thurst, on September 20th, 2010
This is the quandary that I have been in these last few months: Time, as they say, is money. The end product might not seem like it, however, this blog takes up a goodly amount of time. There is the writing, research, taking pictures, editing, and what not. Then there is back end stuff, updating software, plugins, etc.
Then there is actual money expended: domain registration and web site hosting.
In short, it is not free, at least not for me anyway.
I did place a few Google Ads in line with some of the content to offset the money part, which they have met that goal, but not much else.
While it is nice to have a hobby, and fun to tell stories about radio engineering, in the end, it really does not help me earn more money, support my family, advance my carrier or my standing in the community. The children are young, but that will not stay that way for long. Before I know it there will be braces to pay for, a car or two, college education and whatever comes after that. Not to mention my own superannuation to look forward to, with such considerations as adding to the retirement account.
There is another shift in my status coming up, with my wife off to work again as a school teacher. I find there are not enough hours in the day to work the part time radio engineering gig and meet the school bus to off load the children. Therefore, something has to give, that being the part time radio engineering gig.
I am, therefore, looking for ways to make money at home. Developing this blog or turning it into a full fledged radio engineering news website might fun, but it would be much more work, and there is the rub. I can’t do more work on this site without seeing some return. I don’t mind working, in fact, I enjoy working, but I can’t do it for free.
So, I am open to ideas on how to monitize this blog or develop it into something else that will make some money. The third option is to let it go… I’d rather not do that.
By Paul Thurst, on September 10th, 2010
Your humble author has been honored by Radio Survivor. Go ahead on over and check out Radio Obsessive Profile #9, we’ll be here when you get back
By Paul Thurst, on July 19th, 2010
I was reading the July 14th radio world, on line because I still haven’t subscribed, and found this blog quoted by the editor. More specifically, on page 4, the editor writes about this post where I debate keeping my radio world subscription. Without actually naming the blog, asks how well he (the editor) is doing his job.
One of my aims in writing this thing is to provoke thought. The fact that the editor of Radio World is asking his readers about the direction the publication is heading is a sign that, at least in one case, I have been successful.
My other aims are:
- pass along useful information
- tell my story
- write stuff (I am compelled to write things)
Regarding Radio World itself, I still read the digital version of the magazine found on the Radio World website. The importance of impartial reporting of radio broadcasting’s technical issues cannot be overstated. These days there are many pressures being applied to Radio in general from things like the FCC, Big Group Radio, MMTC, Ibiquity, NPR, the recording industry and others. Some of these groups do not have the radio industries best interests in mind, but rather are looking to improve their take. Indeed, some of the schemes proposed are technically flawed or down right destructive. Biased reporting degrades the integrity of any publication and diminishes it’s value and when it comes to the most read technical trade magazine, that is alarming.
I applaud Radio World for it’s recent publication of articles that bring to light HD-Radio’s technical issues. That is a welcome development and such things should continue. Technical writers need to be technically minded people, not someone that retypes press releases. When it comes to new technology, hard question need to be asked and answered, that is a reporter’s job after all.
|
Axiom
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
~1st amendment to the United States Constitution
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
~Benjamin Franklin
...radio was discovered, and not invented, and that these frequencies and principles were always in existence long before man was aware of them. Therefore, no one owns them. They are there as free as sunlight, which is a higher frequency form of the same energy.
~Alan Weiner
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers
~Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Article 19
|
Open Mic