All posts by Gary Stigall

Meetings

June Online Meeting: KNBC Transmitter Engineer Dennis Doty Talks About His Years Atop Mount Wilson

Dennis Doty spends his days working on the mountain above the Los Angeles Basin making sure KNBC doesn’t miss a precious minute of airtime. It’s an interesting job, and he has a few things to say about the job he’s had for over 15 years. Dennis will cover some advice:

  • Sometimes we need to listen to the weather guy
  • Be prepared for rare events
  • Expect the unexpected
  • Do the best with what you have to work with
  • Don’t become a liability
  • Recover and work as a community

Join SBE 47 and 36 for Dennis’s Zoom presentation on Tuesday, June 13, at 11:30 AM PDT.

About Our Speaker, Dennis Doty

Dennis is a broadcast engineer with over 38 years in TV broadcasting.  Fresh out of high school in the Imperial Valley, he started in master control at KECY El Centro back in the days before automation.  They aired from satellite, film,  ¾” UMatic, 1” and even quad 2″ tape formats.  Dennis worked his way up through directing and technical directing, offline and online editing, then to station engineering at KESQ Palm Springs, FNN, Disney Channel and a few others. 

In 2000, Dennis became Chief Engineer for XETV Fox 6 San Diego on the first Avid/Grass Valley disk-drive-based news operation, a proving ground to the automated newsroom systems we have today.  After leaving Fox 6 he came back into LA working with a group of stations that lead him up to Mt Wilson.  After a few years Dennis was contacted by NBC about joining their transmitter team on Mt. Wilson.

Dennis has been with NBC / Telemundo on Mt. Wilson and  Mt. Harvard for over 15 years.  Currently he is responsible for all NBC site operations.  They man the site daily and 24/7 during extreme weather and fires.

Local News

Jeff Crane Joins KPBS

KPBS-FM/TV Senior Engineering Manager Kevin Schrader told us that Jeff Crane joined their staff in April as a Broadcast Engineer. Jeff comes from KSWB-TV Fox 5 where he was a Broadcast IT Engineer for three years. He had previously worked with KSTS (TV) in San Jose, and as a freelance entertainment event technician in various roles.

Meetings

May Meeting: Perry Priestley of Broadcast Electronics

Elenos, Italian manufacturer of FM broadcast transmitters, acquired Broadcast Electronics in Quincy, Illinois, a highly regarded US manufacturer of AM, FM, and TV transmitters. BE has been known for years for its high quality transmitters, and Elenos has gained market share for their compact FM devices. Perry Priestley will update us on their lines and philosophies, sharing stories along the way.

Join us in an online presentation Tuesday, May 9th, at 11:30 AM organized by Chapter 47 of Los Angeles. Here’s the Zoom Link for registration.

About Perry

Perry Priestley has worked in the professional broadcast industry for over 49 years. He joined Broadcast Electronics in June 2019 in the position of Chief Operating Officer and he’s now the Chief Sales Officer. Previously he held the position of CEO at Anywave Communication Technologies Inc. He has also held positions in Sales and Business Development with Linear Industries Brazil, Ibiquity Digital Corporation (now Xperi), Thales-France (now Thomson Broadcast), EEV-Marconi, and Philips (Pye TVT) in the UK. Perry has presented at over 200 technical broadcast conferences worldwide, has been the lead commercial coordinator in notable projects around the world, and has been a significant contributor to many new product releases in the radio and television broadcast market. 

Perry earned a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from Cambridge University, England, and a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Telecommunications from Cambridge College of Technology.

Local News

San Diego County EAS Plan Complete

We’ve revised the 10-year-old San Diego County Emergency Alert System Plan and it’s ready for distribution. Changes are minor. You’re no longer asked to fax in your alerts, thank you very much. The old CLERS and San Diego County LIFE system with their radio backbones are gone. KSSX (FM) 95.7 is no longer listed as an LP1 station; you might remember that station had served for a while as a simulcast FM source of KOGO (AM). We cleaned up grammar and layout.

I was the primary editor of the document, but it could not have been properly done without the valuable input of John Rigg of iHeartMedia; Richard Rudman, volunteer Vice-Chair of the California State Emergency Coordination Committee; and Daniel Vasquez of the San Diego County Office of Emergency Services. 

If you are in charge of your broadcast facility EAS execution, you should keep a copy of the revised plan with your other EAS materials. The plan is not publicly distributed, but you can obtain it by sending me a request. Mention what stations in San Diego County you take care of if I don’t already know.