BE Radio July/August 1996 Contract Engineering Maintaining multi-station facilities By William Fawcett --------------------------------------------------------------------- William Fawcett is president of Mountain Valley Broadcast Service, Inc., a broadcast engineering firm in Harrisonburg, VA. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Years ago it was common practice for a radio station to have a full-time, staff engineer -- or perhaps even an engineering department. Broadcast deregulation of the 1980s (and the concurrent increase in broadcast equipment's reliability) brought an end to that. Engineers who could adapt took on the role of "contract engineer." This business approach was further fueled by the establishment of Docket 80-90 stations shortly thereafter. By the late 1980s, it was not unusual for a contract engineer to have a dozen or more such stations on his or her roster. But having a string of Class-A FMs and daytime AMs for clients has its drawbacks, most of them monetary. Many of these stations hardly had enough money for good maintenance, much less capital expenditures. Now consider the present day, where the trend is toward consolidation and formation of the "superduopoly." In many cases this implies a multi-station facility. Even before recent changes in the law, stations were experimenting with consolidation through LMAs and earlier levels of duopoly. Now the prospect exists for outright ownership of up to eight stations in a market by one firm. This provides the potential (perhaps the requirement) for multi-station owners to direct increased funds into technical capitalization and operations. Will the circle be unbroken? It is possible that this may signal the return of the staff engineer. The technical demands of a consolidated facility are great and may require a full-time presence. If we've learned anything from the last 20 years it is this: the engineer who adapts is the engineer who survives. Being a staff engineer (i.e, a station employee) may be advantageous. Larger companies may be able to offer various perks unavailable to the small business. On the other hand the clever contract engineer who can structure his/her work within the IRS independent contractor guidelines may also reap the benefits of consolidation. Think of it this way: less travel, more money. Contract engineering firms might take a cue from other industries and assign individual technicians responsibility for certain major accounts. Under that scenario one person has working, day-to-day knowledge of the facility, but other (perhaps more senior) persons are available for major projects or disasters. This is where the field service firm, as opposed to either a single contract engineer or staff engineer, has a marked advantage: when lightning strikes three transmitters and two studios at once, there is only so much a single person can do. A newly consolidated station group will typically require a lot of immediate engineering work, and it may need much more shortly thereafter. The design work and capital improvements involved will likely present plenty of challenges. Your client has probably paid millions for this group of stations, so try not to think small. Start with planning (where else?) Naturally, you should not proceed in a haphazard way. The client also must be convinced of the requirement for detailed planning -- and the need to pay for such work. This is no longer a stand-alone radio station. The physical-plant infrastructure, audio distribution, studios and transmission facilities will all be stretched to their limits, and interdependent on one another like never before. When five stations go down at once, redundancy ceases to be a luxury. Besides extensive planning, the level of documentation must also be increased. Wiring tables, maintenance logs, even the location of buried cables all become critical issues. Contractors might consider an investment in a laptop computer, if they don't already have one. Speaking of computers, have you noticed the number of computers in some of these larger multi-station facilities? Besides the expected office computers and LANs, there are computers in studios, automation systems, music playlist computers, traffic, billing and perhaps remote machine/transmitter-site control. Because of the specialized nature of many of these systems, the installation, maintenance and repair often falls upon the broadcast engineer. Here again, adapting and surviving will be key components of the successful engineer. An engineer's dream Consider the example of one typical superduopoly, which is faced with consolidating a 3-tower AM array with another non-directional AM, plus two (possibly three) FMs -- including auxiliary antennas. This implies combiners, isocouplers, directional proofs and lots of detuning. With several full-power backup transmitters, this could amount to a facility rivaling that of a major short-wave broadcaster. Add to that the need for computer control and monitoring, sophisticated electrical distribution and generating systems, dummy loads and antenna switching, HVAC systems and Halon fire-suppression. Clearly, a "seat-of-the-pants" approach will just not work here. This is a great challenge for the truly professional broadcast engineer. Skyport 2000 Here's another affected area to think about: An increasing number of individual stations now receive signals from multiple satellites. Adding more stations and a minor regional network or two, and before you know it, you've got 6 or 10 dishes out on the lawn, each feeding multiple users. (Even if all the stations need to look at the same satellite, you can only split the signal to so many receivers.) It is therefore worth thinking about bigger and better dishes to feed those splits, and to build patchable redundancy into the system. Low-noise block-converters (LNBs) complicate the situation even more. A possible solution is the global use of low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) instead, placing block convertors downstream (inside) after the patch panel. Another reason for upgrading the dishes has to do with increasing levels of terrestrial interference, as well as a fully populated 2? spacing plan. Only a quality dish will yield the desired signal to noise ratio. Digital satellite receivers are not handling this problem as well as expected; pops and clicks are more noticeable than soft analog failures. Audio distribution Gone forever are the days when you could twist a few resistors together and split an audio feed to a few studios. A multi-station facility might involve 5 or 10 studios, and may also include a high level of RF. This requires many distribution amps (perhaps even routing switchers), miles of cable, and most important, planning and documentation. Make sure your plans are flexible; anticipate satellite network changes on a regular basis. Look also at your RPUs, ISDN and telephone interfaces. It is not uncommon for the sales staff of a multi-station facility to bundle a remote package, often with the same announcer doing the remotes on one station after another. After all the stations have had a feed from the site, the cycle repeats. For studio design, think generic. A uniform studio design is a real plus. Formats change and equipment breaks. A fully patchable facility can really take the pressure off. If you are not fully automated, at least put all your commercials on hard-disk, and have your system networked to all of the studios. Where studios must be specific, not generic, have at least one other studio capable of running that format. That was then, this is now These are just some of the factors that will be important in supporting a multi-station facility. Consolidation is driven by capital investment, and the increased demands placed on a facility will drive that infusion of funds even more. It remains to be seen if this is just another short-lived, upward trend in a cyclical economic pattern, but it certainly is preferable to the lean times seen in the early 1990s. For the capable contract engineer, it is important not to get hung up on labels. Changing conditions may precipitate a new business paradigm. Go with the flow -- the prospect for high-quality employment opportunities with commensurate pay is good. When the FCC dropped the first-class license and dropped the requirement for most stations to have full-time engineers, the industry saw an influx of "jack-leg" engineers. The CB-radio installer who handles a station or two on the side may soon be looking for supplemental work flipping hamburgers. (At least the minimum wage is going up.) Conversely, the professional broadcast engineer should strongly embrace this new era. There is work, there is money, and with a little talent plus some good business sense, it can be a positive time for you. BLURBS: The engineer who adapts is the engineer who survives. When 5 stations go down at once, redundancy ceases to be a luxury. Your client has probably paid millions for this group of stations, so try not to think small.