While not meeting in person, I’ve been talking to many of you by phone and email lately, and there’s a thread of commonality in your stories. Our healthcare workers, shippers, grocery workers, and take-out people are really on the front lines, often contacting hundreds of people a day. These people are doing heroes’ work. 

Among the second tier are broadcast engineers have been busy going to work to make sure our broadcast plants still work. You’ve likely been making sure the reporters and entertainers working from home are set-up to do so. And you’ve been doing this as part of a force reduced by corporate downsizing, so things have been a bit frantic. 

Our broadcast engineers are entering homes or more and getting technical stuff set-up and tested for people who otherwise may never have known more than working a laptop and phone. Sometimes this is occurring with few professional tools, so you’re making do with what you have, sometimes with mobile phone SIP apps and laptop apps like Skype. You need to make sure they interface with the devices between them and the transmitter. 

Our chapter Chairman, Tony McDaid, says iHeart has the good fortune of having a stock of professional codecs to leave their work-at-home reporters and deejays, and powerful remote routing and voice-tracking capabilities that help by requiring less continuing support. 

I’m grateful for having a career in high demand right now.

And I’m grateful for our fellowship and find myself while in increased isolation reflecting on how little time we spend together. I’m looking forward to fixing that. 

iHeartMedia applied yesterday with the FCC to transfer ownership of KFMB-AM 760 kHz San Diego from Local Media San Diego for $1.2-million. The FCC had granted a transfer of ownership to LMSD from TEGNA just a month ago. iHeart has been operating KFMB-AM on a temporary local marketing agreement (LMA) since the FCC grant. The new owners will have to change the station call letters as part of the transfer agreement.

The addition of KFMB-AM to the iHeart market portfolio will put them to the upper limit of 5 FM and 3 AM stations. However, sister station KFI (AM) Los Angeles delivers a city-grade signal into the city of San Diego and shows up in market Nielsen ratings.

In mid-February, Dean Imhof took the Chief Engineer job at Local Media San Diego. He had been freelancing there to help maintain the Mira Mesa studios of 91X, Magic 92.5, and Z90.3 FM, all Tijuana LMAs. With the purchase of KFMB 100.7 FM, management apparently justified his full-time help.

Dean said he quickly got a studio outfitted with gear from the KFMB studios in Kearny Mesa, including much of the ENCO automation system, SAS mixer, half of the SAS router, and associated hardware. He’s planning to move over to the same RCS NextGen automation the other LMSD stations use. KFMB-FM (which will have to change callsigns, by the way) uses a WorldCast Audio over IP system as a studio-to-transmitter link, just as they do for the three Tijuana stations.

With the Coronavirus emergency, he’s still working at the studios, though with fewer other staff members. Some air staff and junior promotions workers are there, but sales, traffic, accounting, and digital media are mostly working from home.

For the past two years, Dean has worked as a broadcast engineer for the Turning Point Ministries in Lakeside, but work had slowed down after an initial large build-out. He’s also known in San Diego for his technical work at KFMB Stations and at Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia).