No Chapter 36 Meeting in April – See You at the NAB Show!

The Society of Broadcast Engineers has a busy schedule this year at the NAB Show in Las Vegas April 22 – 27.

Saturday, April 22, SBE hosts the annual day-long Ennes Workshop, with a selection of technical presentations–a mix of new technologies and applications of old technologies.

Visit the NAB Booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center North Hall Upper Deck (new location) starting Monday April 24 to check out the books, answer questions, and enter a daily drawing for prizes.

Tuesday they have the Spring Membership Meeting, a fast-moving update of SBE business with a prize drawing at the end. A Member Reception follows with snacks and door prizes.

Two Engineers Making the Transition with CW6

Jeff Latimer

Two TV Maintenance Engineers have moved to KFMB-TV from XETV Bay City Television just ahead of the closure of the Bay City facility down the street in Kearny Mesa.

Jeff Latimer had served as Broadcast Engineer and Facilities Manager at Bay City Television since 2012. He started March 6 as Broadcast Maintenance Engineer at KFMB Stations.

Mark Goodman

Mark Goodman had served as Director of Engineering at Bay City Television since 2013. He started March 12 as Broadcast Maintenance Engineer at KFMB Stations. He will continue some part-time work at XETV in the transition period. Mark started with Bay City in January 2006.

KFMB-TV 8 will be taking over the CW Network affiliation contract and the CW6 identity in San Diego from XETV Tijuana, which decided to close its U.S. operations at the end of May. The last day of news programming at XETV was Friday, March 31.

KFMB is also hiring news, operations, sales, and programming personnel in anticipation of the CW affiliation.

Entercom Takeover of CBS Radio Progresses

Last week, the FCC recorded Entercom’s applications to transfer several of their stations into a trust for the purpose of divesting them due to exceeding the maximum stations allowed within a given metropolitan market.

Entercom, which owns four FM stations in the San Diego market, announced an agreement to merge with CBS Radio on February 2, 2017. CBS owns two FM stations in San Diego. In order to conform to the FCC limit of five FMs, KSOQ 92.1 MHz Escondido was offered into a divestiture trust for later sale.

Similarly, the new group asked the FCC to put into the same divestiture group KSWD 100.3 and KCBS-FM 93.1 in Los Angeles, though only one will likely sell.

In San Diego, two full-time engineers work for CBS Radio and two for Entercom.

Area TV Stations to Switch Network Affiliations

A number of San Diego and Tijuana stations have changed, or are changing soon their network affiliations for various reasons.

The CW Network is moving from XETV (physical channel 23) to KFMB 8 May 31 as a cost-savings move for Televisa. The CW 6 news operation discontinues March 31, though KFMB is expected to re-start CW6 news on June 1 and take over the channel 6 cable and satellite slots with the CW6 brand.

Galavision is moving from XHBJ 44 to XETV 23 May 31. Galavision is owned by Televisa, which also owns XETV.

Azteca America has moved to XHDTV 47 from KZSD analog 39, but is expected to eventually land at XHAS 34.

Currently, KZSD 39 is duplicating KGTV 10, but is expected to leave the air during repacking.

Telemundo is moving to KNSD 40 from XHAS 34 on July 1. This has been foreseen for some time since KNSD’s owner, Comcast NBC Universal, also owns the Telemundo network.

Society of Broadcast Engineers