Commentary

SBE36.ORG v4.0

Welcome to the new website! Our previous version, written with the Mambo content management system, was getting long in the tooth. It was inelegant to work with, and it got so that only Internet Explorer would edit the posts, and that won’t do.

The e-mail newsletter interface and appearance was less than optimal, and it would add random exclamation points to the output.

All that, and the host moved from San Diego to somewhere in Florida, and sometimes the latency would give you sufficient time to go to the restroom waiting for a page load.

I have wanted to play with WordPress, and true to its reputation, it’s elegant and well-documented. When I discover a new feature, I tend to think, “Damn, this is good.”

So I made some new banners in Photoshop, deleted a line of CSS code that made the spacing too high at the top, transferred stories going back to 2005, imported the newsletter subscribers, and added some new posts. The old news transfer was laborious, but it was my own fault for misplacing the password for the database administration, which kept me from doing a text dump.

It’s come a long way from the first edition in 1997 that I edited manually on Netscape Navigator. But the content loaded fast, photos were often added, and hey–the news got out.

I hope to add some very useful new features, including comments from members on our stories and the ability for sponsors to sign-up and renew online. The site is already simple enough to operate that any of you could add a story easily.

I still have to create and post the sponsor banners and move additional old posts.

There’s never enough time.

National

SBE Announces National Board Candidates

Candidates for the board of directors of the Society of Broadcast Engineers have been slated by the SBE Nominations Committee. The election will be held beginning July 26 and run through August 28. Candidates include:

President

Ralph Hogan, CPBE, DRB, CBNT, Director of Engineering, KJZZ-FM/KBAQ-FM, Tempe, AZ, Chapter 117

Vice President

Joseph Snelson, CPBE, 8-VSB, Vice President of Engineering, Meredith Corporation, Las Vegas, Nev., Chapter 128

Secretary

James Leifer, CPBE, Director of Engineering and IT, Clear Channel Communications, Boynton Beach, Fla., Chapter 53

Treasurer

Jerry Massey, CPBE, 8-VSB, AMD, DRB, CBNT, Corporate Regional Engineer and DoE, Entercom Communications, Greenville, S.C., Chapter 86

Director Candidates

Tim Anderson, CPBE, DRB, CBNT, Mgr. Radio Market & Product Development, Harris Corp., Covington, Ky., Chapter 33
Andrea Cummis, CBT, CTO, Technology & Operations Consultant, Roseland, N.J., Chapter 15
Steve Fluker, CBT, Senior Engineer, Cox Media Group Orlando, Orlando, Fla., Chapter 42
Kirk Harnack, CBRE, Vice President- Telos Products, Telos Systems, Nashville, Tenn., Chapter 103
John Heimerl, CPBE, Vice President, WHRO TV/Radio, Norfolk, Va., Chapter 54
Gary Kline, CBT, CBNT, Senior Vice President Corporate Engineering & IT, Cumulus Media, Atlanta, GA, Chapter 5
Scott Mason, CPBE, CBNT, Regional Director of Engineering, CBS Radio, Los Angeles, Calif., Chapter 47
Wayne Pecena, CPBE, 8-VSB, AMD, DRB, CBNT, Asst. Dir. of Educational Broadcast Services, Office of Information Technology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, Chapter 99

Qualified members, nominated by a voting member and endorsed by at least nine additional voting members, may be added to the ballot. Candidates must be voting members, current in their SBE dues and hold certification by the SBE at an engineering level (CBT or higher). If elected, these same requirements apply during the term of office. Voting members include Regular, Senior, Fellow and Life members and the voting representatives of SBE Sustaining Members. Candidate nominations are to be emailed, faxed or mailed to the SBE national office in Indianapolis, attention: National Secretary, James Leifer, CPBE, and be received by no later than 4 p.m., EDT, July 13, 2012.

The election will commence via the Internet on July 26. Voting members who chose to opt out of electronic balloting during this year’s dues renewal period will receive their ballots in the mail.
All ballots are to be completed on-line, or if mailed, arrive at the SBE national office, by 4:30 p.m. EDT on August 28. Votes will be tabulated that evening by an authorized board of tellers.

National

EAS Update

There has been lots of talk about EAS these last few weeks, though not much to do … yet. Yes, we had the Text to Speech fire drill, but that was a big to do about nothing for most of us.

The June 30, 2012 deadline to have certified CAP EAS equipment in place, connected to the Internet and polling the IPAWS aggregator, is still looming. If you are a radio broadcaster like me, you have probably been compliant with having your equipment in place and connected to the Internet for quite some time. Like me, you’re probably just playing the waiting game to hear what you need to enter into your equipment for it to contact the FEMA concentrator.

One of the larger EAS equipment manufacturers has published a statement that says, “Looking ahead to June 30, you need to be receiving CAP messages by then. We will have a release of the IPAWS enabled ENDEC software out in a week or two.”

I strongly suggest you check your vendor’s website to see if they have an update for your unit. This information is way overdue from IPAWS, FEMA or whomever, to us in the field. Let’s hope we have more than a week’s notice. Maybe we will get some clues from the IPAWS/NASBA/NAB webinar titled: “Getting Ready for CAP: Countdown to June 30”. This webinar will be held June 6, from 4 to 5 p.m. ET (1 to 2 p.m. PT).

I believe most of us are hoping some of the final instructions about connecting to a concentrator and testing, will be addressed.

Scott Mason, CPBE
SBE EAS Education Committee Chairman
SBE website EAS Page

Society of Broadcast Engineers