Steve Church, founder of Telos-Omnia-Axia in Cleveland, passed away September 28 of brain cancer at the age of 57. An obituary in Radio World Magazine tells of Steve’s pioneering work with digital signal processing (DSP) in the development of telephone hybrids for broadcasting. He also introduced MP3 digital compression to broadcasting with his development of codecs that could extend audio spectrum for use over ISDN and voice telephone circuits.

Church was born and went to high school in San Diego, and he presented his digital hybrid and ISDN concepts at chapter 36 meetings in the mid-1980s and 1990s.

SBE headquarters announced national election results that continue the current slate of officers, with some new directors.

New to the board as directors are Andrea Cummis, CBT, CTO, senior director of engineering 
and operations, WNET in New York, N.Y.; John Heimerl, CPBE, vice president of strategic technologies, WHRO-TV, WHRO-FM, WHRV-FM in Norfolk, Va.; and Wayne M. Pecena, CPBE, 8-VSB AMD, DRB, CBNE, director of engineering, Texas A&M University-Educational Broadcast Services in College Station, Texas.

2012 was the first year the society offered online voting, which saw a 64% increase in ballots cast from the previous year. The total number of ballots cast was 1,313, which were 511 more ballots than in 2011.

SBE founder and first president John Battison has passed away in Loudonville, Ohio. According to an article written about him by his editor Chriss Sherer at Radio Magazine Online, John had a long, distinguished career as broadcast engineer, both in the U.S. and internationally. He served as staff broadcast engineer, technical consultant, writer, and lecturer. He founded the Society of Broadcast Engineers in 1963 and was honored with the SBE’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

Voting for candidates to serve on the 2012-13 SBE Board of Directors is ongoing. Members of SBE are able to vote online for the first time in society history.

Voting members should have an email from Intelliscan, the company conducting the election, sent the morning of July 26. The email contains a unique link to the member’s ballot. To vote, open that email and click on the link.

Two reminder emails will be sent to members in August who have not yet voted. Each of those messages will also contain the unique link to the member’s ballot.

Members who opted out of electronic voting are receiving ballots in the mail. All electronic ballots must be cast by the deadline of 4:30 p.m. EST on Tuesday, August 28. Paper ballots must be received at the SBE National Office by that same date and time.

The SBE Board of Directors consists of volunteers that govern the society. All four officer positions and six of the 12 director seats are being contested this year.

Barry Mishkind tells some stories of tragic lack of tower maintenance in this BDR article.