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.

Just in case you were expecting a reprieve, the FCC left no doubt in its mandate that the June 30th deadline remains for the new CAP/EAS receiver/encoder requirements. The FCC says: “This means any necessary equipment must be installed and operational by that date.”

Sage Alerting Systems EAS encoders can finally be updated for the new EAS CAP-compliant rules that begin June 30, 2012. The company posted the firmware upgrade here.