/ 10.20.2011 12:00AM
Andy Setos Wins Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in Engineering
LOS ANGELES: Andy Setos is receiving a lifetime achievement
Emmy Award. Setos, head of engineering with the Fox Group until he parted ways
with the company in July, is receiving the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime
Achievement Award from the he Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The Jenkins
award is a special engineering honor recognizing “an individual whose
contributions over a long period of time have significantly affected the state
of television technology and engineering.” It’s namesake was credited with the
creation of mechanical television, and his business was granted the first
commercial TV license in 1928.
Mr. Setos worked with Fox for 23 years, guiding the company through the digital
transition, the adoption of HD technology, content and standards issues and the
regulatory landscape. He became Fox’s first senior vice president of
broadcasting operations and engineering in 1988. While there, he managed the
company’s worldwide engineering operations, developed digital content
protection technology and pioneered transmission of national news and sports
coverage using fiber-optic transmission.
Previous Jenkins Award winners include Robert Seidenglanz for his role in developing
ENG trucks; Ron Estes for taking mono broadcast audio to stereo and then to
5.1. LG’s Dr. Woo Paik received the Jenkins in 2008 for inventing the algorithm
that made broadcast HDTV possible. Ray Dolby won in 2003 for his seminal audio
work. Charles “Capp” Cappleman took it in 2002 for creating CBS Television
City.
Setos graduated with a bachelor’s from Columbia University of Engineering and
Applied Science in 1971. He started in the TV business at WNET-TV in New York. He
moved on to Warner Amex, and later to Viacom as senior vice president of
engineering. At Viacom, he established the production infrastructure and
designed the engineering systems for MTV. He also designed the facilities for
the Fox network, Fox News, NFL on Fox and Fox Animation Studios.
Setos foresaw the migration to mobile video back in 2005, when he told Rick
Merritt of
EE Times, “I have a firm
belief that this is a new medium: portable audiovisual.”
He is a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and a
member of the FCC Technology Advisory Committee. He elected to not renew his
contract with Fox this summer.
He’ll receive the Jenkins Award Wednesday, Oct. 26 at the 63rd Primetime Emmy
Engineering Awards in Hollywood.
Other winners include Time Warner and Time Warner Cable for the Full Service
Network; IBM and Fox for the Linear Tape File system; Panavision and Sony for
single-chip digital camera technology advances; Ultimate Arm for the
gyrostabilized remote controlled crane; Apple, for the iPad; Yahoo! For
Connected TV to Yahoo!; Comcast for the Xfinity TV iPad app, and Time Warner
Cable for the Time Warner TV iPad app.
~ Deborah D. McAdams