Engineering Radio

My former employer thinks he knows better than anyone what to do in every given situation.  ”Mister,” as he is “affectionately” known, has a legendary cheap streak.  When I worked for the company, every year there would be a debate on whether we should plow and maintain the road to a certain transmitter site.  Mind you, this is not just any transmitter site, but the transmitter site of the number one billing station of the entire group of 35 stations.  It is located in the wealthy suburban setting of market Number One and bills more than most of their other markets combined.

Naturally, when I was there, I put up a stiff fight to make sure the road got patched and plowed.  Oh they would scream and nash their teeth about how unfair it was, and can’t we do this or do that, etc.  This went on every year for the entire ten years I worked for the company.  For my part, I just ignored it.  Back in October of last year, when I was first starting to see the handwriting on the wall, there was this clandestine meeting with the other residents on the road which I was not invited to.  You see, the lower half of the road has houses on it.  Mister thought that the residents of the road should chip in for the road plowing.  When they refused (because they were already plowing the lower part of the road themselves) he said we would absolutely, positively ,100% not be plowing the road this winter.

I departed the company in January.  Since then, the upper part of the road was not touched.  Then came last week’s blizzard.  Prior to the blizzard, the generator fuel tank was 9/10 full.  The power went out on Wednesday during the first storm.  I called the General Manager for the radio station on Friday and told him that the generator would need fuel soon and asked if the road had been plowed.  He said they were working on it and it should be done on Saturday.  I told him that we needed a fuel truck up there ASAP otherwise they would be going off the air.  He said he was on it.

Sunday morning at 6:30 am, the generator ran out of fuel.  Naturally, my phone rings.  I begin calling around all the fuel oil companies in the area to see if I can get a Sunday delivery.  I finally arrange something and we also get a 4WD pickup with a 100 gallon day tank to meet us there.  When I arrive at the site at 9:30 am, a backhoe was just starting to clear the upper part of the road.  The snow is knee deep and there is a layer of ice under it.  It took until about 1:30pm to get the road cleared enough to get the 4WD pickup, with tire chains near the generator to transfer fuel.  Then, because the fuel pump sucked air, we had to bleed the injectors, reset the faults, etc.  We finally got the generator started around 2:00pm.

So, let us compare costs:

Plowing the road cost about $800.00-$900.00 per storm.  This year, there were five to six storms where the road needed to be plowed. Total $4,500.00

Last Sunday, the station was down for about 7 hours.  I’d say that station likely bills $150.00 per unit on a Sunday morning, 10 units an hour so they lost $10,500.00 by being off the air.  Then there is the backhoe needed to clear the road.  A backhoe was needed because there was so much snow on the road that a regular snow plow could not move it, especially plowing up hill.  That cost $1,500.00.  Then there is my overtime and the guy with the 4WD pickup, another $1,440.00.  Total cost to plow the road and get the station back on the air, somewhere in the neighborhood of $13,440.00.

So, yeah, Mister is really saving money.  How’s that working out for you, a$$hat?

Okay, a few weeks have past and I suppose a little blog posting may clear up things a little.  A lot of this is going to be personal, including my observations about the company that I worked for for the last almost eleven years.

Here is what happened:  Long about October or so, one of the big wigs was around the studio building.  I’d always gotten along reasonably with the guy, we had our occasional differences of opinion, but nothing that I would consider out of the ordinary.   So anyway, Mr. Big Wig was acting a little strangely.  On a side note, I observe people, I can almost always tell when someone is lying or being less than truthful (except compulsive liars, they are harder to spot).  At the time, I thought it a little strange.

Then, around three weeks later, I noticed a help wanted ad in Radio World.  Something for Western Massachusetts, which again, I thought was odd because there are no radio groups in Western Massachusetts.  My gut reaction was that is either my job, or the contractor in Albany.

Finally, around the middle of November, the general manager at my location began to act shifty as well, and the jig was up.  I knew that I was on the way out, likely because I refused to do any more work without more pay.

I am fortunate for the following reasons:

1.  The contracting company that took over my position immediately hired me to work for them.  Truth be told, I have better benefits, better working conditions, and a better over all outlook now than before.

2.  About three years ago, I started a side business installing solar systems.  At that time, it was a way to make up for the money I was loosing by working at the radio stations.  It has grown into something that is more than I expected, faster than I expected.  The new work arrangement allows me to still pay the bills and grow my company.

The contractor in question is somebody I have known for twenty years.  He is a good guy and I am happy to be working with him.

I am still, however, deeply deeply disappointed in the way it was handled.

So, my advice to anybody reading is to watch out for yourself.  Keep your eyes and ears open and have a plan B or even C.

As for me, I plan to transition my way out of radio, because as I have opined here, and others have stated as well, there is no future in it.

Posted without further comment:

Sign No. 1: Conspicuously posted vision or value statements are filled with vague but important-sounding words like “excellence” and “quality”

These words are seldom defined and the concepts they allude to are never measured.

Sign No. 2: Bringing up a problem is considered more as evidence of a personality defect rather than as an actual observation of reality

In a dysfunctional company, what it looks like is not only more important than what it is, it is what it is. If you don’t believe that, you are the problem. A surprising amount of information is classified. Dysfunctional companies have more state secrets than the CIA. Anything that might embarrass the boss turns out to be a national security issue.

Sign No. 3: If by chance there are problems, the usual solution is a motivational seminar

Attitude is everything, especially in places where facts are embarrassing or inconvenient. In a dysfunctional family, there’s an elephant — usually a drunken abusive parent — in the parlor, but no one ever mentions him. To appear sane, you have to pretend that the elephant is invisible, and that drives you crazy. Businesses are full of invisible elephants, too. Usually they are things that might cause difficulties for people with enough clout to prevent their discussion. The emperor may be naked, but if you have a good attitude, you won’t mention it.

Sign No. 4: Double messages are delivered with a straight face

Quality and quantity are both job one. You can do it both cheaper and better, just don’t ask how. If you’re motivated enough you should know already.

Sign No. 5: History is regularly edited to make executive decisions more correct, and correct decisions more executive than they actually were

Those huge salaries require some justification.

Sign No. 6: People are discouraged from putting things in writing

What is written, especially financial records, is purposely confusing. You can never tell when you might need a little deniability.

Sign No. 7: Directions are ambiguous and often vaguely threatening

Before you respond to a vague threat, remember this: Virtually every corporate scandal begins with someone saying, “Do it; I don’t care how.” That person is seldom the one who gets indicted.

Sign No. 8: Internal competition is encouraged and rewarded

The word “teamwork” may be batted around like a softball at a company picnic, but in a dysfunctional company the star players are the only ones who get recognition and big bucks.

Sign No. 9: Decisions are made at the highest level possible

Regardless of what it is, you have to check with your boss before doing it. She also has to check with her boss.

Sign No. 10: Delegating means telling somebody to do something, not giving them the power to do it

According to Webster’s Dictionary, you delegate authority, not tasks. In dysfunctional companies you may have responsibility, but the authority lives in the office upstairs.

Sign No. 11: Management approaches from the latest bestseller are regularly misunderstood to mean what we’re doing already is right on the mark

“Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” “Good to Great” and “Who Moved My Cheese?” all seem to boil down to, “quit griping and do more with less.”

Sign No. 12: Resources are tightly controlled

Your department may need upgraded software, but there’s been a spending freeze since 2006. Cost control is entry-level management, but in a dysfunctional company anything more sophisticated is considered too touchy-feely. Whatever you propose, the first question you will be asked is if it can be done cheaper.

Sign No. 13: You are expected to feel lucky to have a job and know you could lose it if you don’t toe the line

Dysfunctional companies maintain control using the threat of punishment. Most will maintain that they also use positive rewards … like your paycheck. A few people are actually fired, but most of those who go are driven to quit.

Sign No. 14: Rules are enforced based on who you are rather than what you do

In a dysfunctional company, there are clearly insiders and outsiders and everyone knows who belongs in each group. Accountability has different meanings depending on which group you’re in.

Sign No. 15: The company fails the Dilbert Test

Dysfunctional organizations have no sense of humor. People who post unflattering cartoons risk joining the ranks of the disappeared. When an organization loses the ability to laugh at itself, it is headed for big trouble. If you’d get in trouble for printing this article and posting it on the bulletin board at work, maybe it’s time to look for another job before this one drives you crazy.

Remember the move Planet of the Apes, at the end, when Charlton Heston realizes that the planet is actually Earth in the future, run by apes?  Here is a little refresher for you:

Anyway, my take on that movie was that world of the Apes was not a better place.  When the Statue of Liberty was blown up, it was the end of everything that represented western civilization, e.g. everything good.

I find some striking parallels in this story.

Radio was discovered and perfected by various inventors and innovators.  Heinrich Hertz is generally accepted as the first person to experiment with electromagnetic waves and their ability to be manipulated.  He was a physicist and an electrical engineer.

Nikola Tesla was the first person to use electromagnetic waves to transmit information.  He was also an electrical engineer.

Guglielmo Marconi developed and implemented commercial radio services, mostly ship to shore transmission facilities which charged customers by the word for delivered telegrams.  He was a physicist.

Reginald Fressenden invented Amplitude Modulation (AM) first using a rotary spark gap transmitter.  His first transmission included a violin solo and a reading from the bible.  This was transmitted a distance of about 1 mile.  He was an electrical engineer.

Lee Deforest invented the electron tube, which allowed for better amplification of transmitted and received radio waves, allowing the reliable transmission of voice over radio and broadcasting.  He was an electrical engineer.

Others such as Steinmetz, Alexanderson, Baker, Armstrong,  and even David Sarnoff (like him or not) added to the inventions and innovations that made radio work as a mass media and entertainment outlet.

Through the Golden Age of Radio, engineers and technical people ruled the roost, continuing to develop the technology and make improvements such as FM radio, Stereo Broadcasting, improved studio equipment, inventing television, and other wireless technology.  Radio was the first technical medium where budding electronics geeks could sink there teeth into something.  The number of devices that we use today because of radio is staggering.  Two way radios, cellphones, wireless internet connections, blue tooth, EZpass, RFID, shoplifting alarms, cordless phones, baby monitors, etc. all came about because somebody had the idea; “hey, we can use radio to do this…”

As the radio broadcasting developed into a big business, it became more of the realm of sales guys.  I once knew a General Manager, who rose from the ranks of the sales department say “Look, I don’t know nuttin about no technical stuff.  Those tubes and everything.”  We call him Biff (cause he looked like the guy from Back to the Future) the manager.  I worked for a general manager who, when I asked to spend money to fix something, would say things like “In the land of the blind, a one eyed man is king.”  While I contemplated what that meant to me, he would run out of the room and disappear for the rest of the day.  From this point, things only became worse.

Now radio is run by bean counters and bankers, a droll lot if there ever was one.  Not that bean counters and bankers are necessarily bad people, they don’t seem to understand the entertainment aspect of radio.  The fact that a successful radio format is more than just playing some music on the air.  It has to take the listener somewhere, either by evoking a memory or emotion, or by providing useful information.  Even a commercial, if well done, can accomplish this.

Computers are inexpensive, they are reliable, they don’t need vacations, they don’t call in sick, they don’t get divorced or get pulled over for drunk driving, they even reproduce good sounding audio.  In the end, however, it is just a machine.  Computers have no personality, no soul, no cognizant judgment, computers cannot decide if something is an emergency, they cannot engage a listener and make a personal connection.

And that is what radio is all about, making a personal connection with the listeners.

So imagine you worked as an engineer in radio in the 1940’s and by some strange occurrence, you were transported to the same radio station in 2009.  The atmosphere would surely be much different, if not completely unrecognizable.  Then you are discovered to be an engineer and the hounds are released.  You are beseeched with inane requests for everything from replacing the florescent light bulbs in the bathroom to fixing the squeaky chair.  You might think you are on another planet.  One run by… Apes.

This would be what it is like on a typical Monday morning department heads meeting…

I’ve had one of those weeks were few things go right.  Sometimes you can look back on a situation and think, that could have been handled better.  Other times there is nothing that could have been done to prevent a problem or problems.

This week started with a continuing T-1 outage to our transmitter site.  This site is serviced by two T-1 circuits, a main and a backup.  Unfortunately, there was a major cable cut that took out both circuits, and the dial up phone line and every other TELCO circuit in the building.  In this case, backups didn’t matter.

I got around the issue by bringing the AudioVault server to the transmitter site.  The program director then drove updates to the transmitter site and loaded them in manually.  Operating from the transmitter site was out of the question for numerous reasons.

This particular radio station is the General Manager’s favorite, thus he called often for updates, which can be annoying.  Nothing worse than trying to fix a problem when you are being continuously interrupted by phone calls.  I tried to explain to him that it didn’t matter how good the format was, whenever a station is off the air it takes priority over everything else.  In this case, however, there was not a lot we could do other than wait for the phone company to fix the problem.

On top of that, another station’s STL transmitter decided to stop working in the middle of the night, which prompted a 1am drive in to the studio.  Add to that the missed appointment by the utility company that left me sitting at a third transmitter site wasting time for an hour, the dead battery in the engineering truck, and the constant nit picking by the corporate office over the expenditure of every nickle and sometimes I have to ask myself; is this worth it?

Explaining to the accountants why we need to replace a 24 year old transmitter at a mountain top transmitter site before the snow flies, for the fifth time, is a little wearing.  Explaining to them why we should lease a new studio building were we don’t need T-1 circuits for STLs (there are plenty of good places out there), especially in light of the 10 day outage we just experienced, is like trying to explain to somebody why it is a bad idea to set yourself on fire.  BECAUSE YOU’LL DIE!

Of course, this is the same company that allowed one of their studios to deteriorate so badly that the production person fell through the floor.  No kidding, it was a single wide moble home, she fell through the floor onto the ground below.  I often wonder how we didn’t get sued or fined.

It may be time.

Tell them no.

In my early engineering days, I was tasked with all sorts of non-engineering things.  Squeaky hinges, broken chairs, changing light bulbs, etc.  I drew the line in a few areas, things like unclogging a toilet for example, required a visit from the plumber.

As a part of these building managment janator services, maintaining the septic tank at an acceptable level so the toilets worked fell under my perview.  Every so often, I would call the honey dipper to come and haul all that crap away.  Then one day the leach field completely failed.  It was only a matter of time, the thing had been in service since 1947.  So, the decision was made to connect up to the city sewer line that had been installed a few years previous.  Why they didn’t just connect to it when the town was installing it is beyond me, however, that all happened before my employment.

It took a while to line up the permits, get a contractor, get a plumber, hire an excavator etc.  Of course, the toilets were still being used, because people need to poop after all, at work.  It is there right.  Under the constitution. Therefore, I hired the honey dipper to come every few days and pump the tank, there were no other options.  Until the general manager had an idea, we could just pump the raw sewage out onto the field by the antenna towers.

No, I said, that is illegal.  Besides, there is a swamp right there and the sewage would get into the swamp.

His reply was “Deer shit in the woods, I’m telling you to pump out the tank.  I don’t want to pay for the shit pumper anymore.”

No.

Raising his voice another few dB “PUMP OUT THAT TANK OR ELSE.”

I very calmly said “Or else what?”

He stomped off to his office to sulk.  I never did pump out that septic tank into the field and it took several more weeks to make the sewer connection.  Every three to four days, that septic service truck would be out there, sucking all the shit out of the tank, in full view of his office.  I would snicker, I wish I could have rigged up a camera to tape his reaction.

What if I had caved and did as he asked.  Then one day, the health department stops by because the neighbors complained about the smell.  I would have been held responsible, even though I was doing what my manager asked me to.  That is the moral of the story, even if you are ordered to do something that you know is illegal, it is ultimately you who will be held responsible.  It is better to go job hunting that to face potential legal consequences, not to mention the loss of reputation, this is a very small business after all.

As radio engineers, we have a whole host of rules that must be adhered to, FCC rules, building codes, fire codes, FAA rules, OSHA rules, etc.   It is up to you to know them and ensure that they are followed within your department.