No, not that kind of engineer. (but it would be awesome if they wore those cool hats!)
The responsibilities of a Broadcast Engineer is a list that keeps… on… growing. The tech at a company like ours has to constantly be upgraded. The tools we use for marketing our clients and serving the community are now FAR beyond the transmitters. It’s a never ending job that has requires people to be on call day and night.
In March, when Covid shut things down, we instantly had some new challenges to keep 6 radio stations on the air and to keep our people safe. Our guys didn’t skip a beat and had our morning shows split up and had several of our staff members broadcasting from home. Since then, we’ve had very few hiccups and they’ve continued to do ALL of the rest of the things…. routers, VPN’s, email accounts, domains, transmitter maintenance, software upgrades, audio streams, video streams, air-fiber links, microwaves, (not that kind) phone systems, optimods, blah, blah, even light bulb replacements and maintaining probably 187 miles of wire.
Hats off to Chris O’Hearn and Tyler Woodward. Thank you for keeping the tech at Mid-West Family in a constant state of evolution.