You can see it from almost anywhere in the City by the Bay. No other landmark can make that claim — not the Golden Gate Bridge, nor any of the city’s skyscrapers. Including the ground, the tower has six levels, with hundreds of antennas.

Sutro Tower has stood for 52 years in San Francisco. To many residents, it’s now a sign welcoming them home.

“I think there are more Sutro Tower tattoos out there than Golden Gate Bridge tattoos,” Peter Hartlaub said on the Total SF podcast, produced by the San Francisco Chronicle, in an episode commemorating the tower’s 50th anniversary in 2023.

Co-host Heather Knight remarked that the tower can appear differently, viewing it for instance from the city’s botanical garden or from across the bay.

“It’s like a living thing,” she said.

The tower has come a long way to become a Bay Area icon. To know its story requires a visit to a moment in time when TV broadcasting was still novel.

Where to Place a TV Tower
In the late 1940s, television was on the bleeding edge. Engineer Bill Ruck recalls Ken Nielsen, his mentor, furnishing the John O’Connell School of Broadcast with an RCA TV package with cameras and control units. The inner-city school operated in San Francisco’s Mission District, part of the city’s unified school district. They used KALW(FM), the first FM educational station built in the country, for training.

A 1953 article from the Radio, TV and Recording Technician-Engineer described engineers and station supervisors, many of whom were former O’Connell students, assisting in organization, advice and hiring trainees. Nielsen was an instructor in the program. Ruck said that gaining any kind of knowledge was integral.

In San Francisco, determining the best place to broadcast TV stations from was a question that didn’t have an easy answer in the days before Longley-Rice-based studies, for example, were available.

“It was all kind of trial and error,” Ruck said.

By 1960, the five primary Bay Area TV stations were fielding complaints of poor reception, which required viewers to reposition their rabbit ears to get a clear picture. There were two separate sites. Channel 7, KGO(TV), had its tower at the site of the mansion, La Avanzada, the one-time home of Adolph Sutro, a San Francisco mayor in the 1890s.

ABC planned to reconfigure the mansion into a broadcast facility for KGO, its new local TV station. By 1949, KGO began transmitting from a 580-foot broadcast tower adjacent to the mansion. KPIX Channel 5 would join KGO there.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s KRON(TV), Channel 4, went on the air in 1949 from a tower on Mount San Bruno. The Chronicle was owned by the Thieriot family. Another prominent family in the city — friendly with the Thieriots — was the Crocker family, which owned Mount San Bruno. When the Chronicle wanted to put on a TV station, it was perfectly logical for them to go to the Crockers and buy property, Ruck said.

“All part of ‘old San Francisco money,’” Ruck remarked.

KQED(TV), Channel 9, joined them in San Bruno in 1954, and Channel 2 KTVU(TV), which signed on in 1958, did the same. KGO would propose a tall tower at Mount Sutro, while KRON proposed a tall tower on San Bruno. “Lots of consulting engineers made piles of money studying the two tall towers,” Ruck said. The two sites resulted in about the same coverage projections with the FCC, so the process stalled. Ultimately, a tall tower on San Bruno was blocked by the FAA, as it was much too close to San Francisco International Airport, about two miles to the southeast.

“That’s why Sutro Tower was built,” Ruck said.

In 1968, four TV stations — KRON, KGO, KPIX and KTVU — came together to form Sutro Tower Inc. Initial designs envisioned a 1,200-foot tower that had a restaurant and observation deck. Opposition ensued. Ultimately, a 977-foot height was settled upon. Construction began in 1971 and it was completed a year later. Antennas were mounted in 1973, and on July 4, the first broadcast from Sutro took place.

Ruck is the best living Sutro historian. He started working for 104.5 KFOG(FM) in 1978, which transmitted atop Sutro — today it is the FM side of sports-talk KNBR. Sutro’s manager at the time was Harry Jacobs, who dated back to working with KGO at the mansion. Ruck has been part of the San Francisco broadcast engineering scene ever since.

“The more I look into it, the more I'm fascinated with the pioneers that did it when it had never been done before,” he said.

After Jacobs retired, Don Lincoln took over. Ruck had access to a file drawer of Sutro history during that time. He remembers a “foot of paper” of reports. Their plans, Ruck recalled, only considered San Francisco, San Mateo and Alameda Counties. At the time, there were only ranches and almond groves in Contra Costa County and Santa Clara County.

“Nobody lived there,” Ruck said of their logic.

Today offers a much different story. In fact, Ruck said that if such a tower were being planned now, he’d put it in the East Bay, such as the site of 94.1 KPFA(FM)’s transmitter in the Berkeley Hills.

Navigating Public Perception
Early public relations for the tower — and the surrounding Twin Peaks, Forest Knolls and Midtown Terrace neighborhoods — was, at best, a struggle. Ruck recalls that in the early 1980s two more area TV stations wanted to move to Sutro. Its transmitter building did not have the space for more occupants. Management drafted a design to allot more space, which required a permit and public notice, leading to a lot of pushback. There are homes as close as 300 feet from the tower. Some neighbors refer to it as “an industrial complex.”

“San Francisco invented the concept of NIMBY,” Ruck joked.

Lincoln wanted to engage the neighborhood. He set up a public meeting where the benefits of the tower were highlighted. Ruck remembers being in attendance. Afterward, a neighbor across from where Ruck’s parents lived scolded him for being involved with Sutro Tower. “It was a PR nightmare,” Ruck recalled.

As an engineer, managing the mindset of an average person’s perception of a large tower in their backyard wasn’t necessarily part of Lincoln’s thought process. Ruck remembered suggesting to him that someone be hired specifically to manage neighborhood outreach. Ever since, Sutro has had someone in such a capacity.

How did Sutro become the regional symbol that it is today?

Cody Hmelar, former chief engineer for Salem Media and an instructor at the University of Pittsburgh, grew up in the Bay Area. He said feelings about the tower became warmer by the early 2010s, as what he described as “contemporary hipsterism” rose.

It was simultaneous to the growth in popularity of “Karl the Fog,” a personification for the city’s trademark low-cloud layer.

Its Clarendon Avenue location, he said, sets it apart from other Bay Area towers, prompting its use in local art, tattoo designs and even on the San Francisco City Football Club's uniform badge.

While its East Bay penetration may suffer to an extent, as Hmelar noted, Sutro’s inner-city location makes it a prime site for digital TV transmission — especially since the principal satellite and cable headends are in Petaluma, about 33 miles north of downtown San Francisco, and rely on a strong, centralized transmission source.

Managing Sutro Today
Lincoln would retire, succeeded as Sutro’s general manager by Gene Zastrow and Eric Dausman. Dausman in turn announced he was retiring in 2018.

Raul Velez, 56, recalls seeing Sutro Tower out of his bedroom window a few years after it was completed. “I didn’t know it at the time, but it was my source of [TV] cartoons, so it was really important to me,” he said. Velez received encouragement, including from Sutro’s primary RF consultant, Peter Eckmann, to apply for the opening following Dausman’s announcement. Now he guides outreach efforts.

“When I talk to folks and say ‘I work for Sutro Tower,’ they’re like, what?”

Velez has been involved in Bay Area radio engineering since 1989. He was chief engineer for Univision’s San Francisco stations from 2002 to 2016. More recently, Velez was Bonneville’s director of engineering for 96.5 KOIT(FM), 98.5 KUFX(FM), 99.7 KMVQ(FM) and 102.9 KBLX(FM) from 2017–2019, when he applied for the Sutro job.

From a distance, Velez remarked, Sutro looks static. But there’s work going on nearly every day. He works from an office in the reinforced concrete transmission building at the base, which also houses signal handling and transmission equipment. Sutro Tower operates with a dedicated team of five employees handling administrative, power and building maintenance, supported by contract security and external contractors like Full Wave Tower & Broadcast for specialized tasks.

Each entity, which could be TV, FM or two-way, has its own staff or team that is responsible for their infrastructure. “When I have 11 different TV stations with their own perspectives on the business, I have to manage and coordinate the individual philosophies,” Velez said.

TV stations KGO, KPIX, KRON, KTVU, KQED, KRCB, KPYX, KPJK, KCNS, KDTS and KFSF all transmit their signals from Sutro, representing ABC, CBS, FOX, PBS, CW and TelevisaUnivision.

Hmelar pointed out that in the Bay Area, over-the-air TV is particularly important, as there are several foreign-language and minority-owned media networks that make use of digital TV subchannels as their primary communication method. He noted the city’s language-access ordinances.

“It makes being able to broadcast in multiple languages essential,” he said.

On FM, 96.5 KOIT, 98.9 KSOL, 104.5 KNBR and translator 93.7 K229DD, which relays Chinese-language 1400 KVOT(AM), all call Sutro home. Two 102.5 LPFM stations maintain a timeshare from Sutro: KXSF(LP), operated by San Francisco Community Radio, and KSFP(LP), the San Francisco Free Press.

Seven amateur radio groups maintain facilities on Sutro, including the San Francisco Radio Club (W6PW). “We treat them like everyone else,” Velez said.

If someone calls and asks for a check on their suite to make sure a certain green light is on, for example, Sutro’s staff can save them a trip. Or maybe it’s to dispatch a telco company or assist an HVAC vendor. “Really, our job is to make sure the tower is still there every day,” he said.

Making the tower a “living thing” involves plenty of other hands-on endeavors the Sutro team has spearheaded. That includes a 360-degree, rotatable, movable, zoomable panorama of the tower, available at explore.sutrotower.com. Velez said the feature consists of 1,300-gigapixel images placed together, produced by the Portland, Ore.-based Panogs. A 13-minute documentary produced by Stimulant and a team led by Darren David explores the origins of the tower, from the history of the Sutro family to the opposition residents provided before it was erected.

Sutro also keeps up good relations with nearby Glen Park Elementary, where third-grade teacher Sheila Tenney has students draw Sutro Tower as a back-to-school activity each year. “When you see Sutro Tower, you’re home.”

Chicago's Willis Tower and New York's Empire State Building are among other iconic sites with consolidated broadcast facilities. Hmelar describes Sutro as Empire’s “artsy cousin.” Its unique design features one tower and one building, unlike structures with towers atop office or residential spaces. The closest analogy is perhaps Paris's Eiffel Tower, hosting multiple broadcasters in one location, though Sutro lacks tourist amenities.

There have also been numerous earthquake warnings that have been transmitted via its host signals, most notably 1989’s Loma Prieta, which registered 6.9 on the Richter scale.

Former Sutro spokesman Dave Hyams noted the reason the tower withstood the quake — two of the three KGO(AM) towers did not — is the structural science behind it. The tower is embedded in 15 million pounds of cement.

There are seven generators and an associated fuel supply that can keep equipment running for up to three days without power.

Velez noted that maintenance is a constant part of the process. In 2025 that included the repainting of cladding panels.

Sutro removed vertical cladding to comply with seismic code. Inside panels are now thicker to improve rigidity, which also allowed the panels to be painted offsite. The outside horizontal cladding panels are next, and Velez expects the paint job to be completed by 2027.

Velez’s duties are not without stress. “I dealt with more lawyers in the first year I was here than in my previous 50 years of existence,” he cracked. But by all accounts, the relationship between the 977-foot tower and its neighbors is as good as it has ever been. He credits the team at the law firm Womble Bond Dickinson and at Lighthouse Public Affairs for improving communications between the neighbors and the city of San Francisco.

“We’re here, I can be reached 24 hours a day,” he said.

And if you look up in the City by the Bay, you’ll get a glimpse of the tower, peeking through the fog.

1030 WGSF(AM), the longest-running Spanish-language radio station in Memphis, is working to rebuild its transmitter site after it was ransacked in a May copper theft.

The station, owned by Butron Media, was left with a myriad of critical components either rendered missing or destroyed, but it has rebounded with the launch of an FM translator from the same transmitter site.

On May 18, the station’s Jackson Ave. tower site was targeted. Memphis Police said that Kyle Walton, Terrence Goodman and Jonathan Yarbrough were arrested two days later after they were caught burning the copper cables from the WGSF tower site in front of a house on National Street — less than half a mile from the tower site, according to WREG(TV) in Memphis.

Engineer Steven Lara told Radio World approximately 85% of the station’s Kintronic Labs phasor is gone. Coaxial lines coming out of the transmitter were sliced, and its three ATU units were also vandalized by the thieves. WGSF estimated that just replacing the stolen copper wiring and componentry will cost approximately $170,000 — not including engineering fees.

A special temporary authority the station filed on May 28 mentioned that the equipment inside the three transmitter-site doghouses was about 50% destroyed. “The thieves took as much copper as they could carry,” the STA, filed by Steve Crissey of Bromo Communications — Butron’s technical consultant — said.

Today, WGSF’s AM signal is back on the air with reduced power, and it started broadcasting on its 101.5 FM translator on June 11 after its FCC license was granted.

WGSF had operated with 50 kW during the day and 10 kW during critical hours from one tower, non-directional. At night, it ran 1 kW using a directional three-tower array, all located at the same Jackson Ave. site.

The station runs a Spanish-language Regional Mexican format with the “Radio Ambiente” slogan.

Anger, Sadness But Support
Radio World spoke with co-owner Sergio Butron and employee Daniella Garcia. Ivette Butron Ramos is the company’s CEO, while husband Sergio is president.

Initially, Butron and Garcia said they felt angry. Then came sadness.

“It was more than a decade of work — more than just monetary value,” they told Radio World on Friday. What hurt most was the disruption of the connection with listeners, many of whom were asking why the station was off the air, they said.

Local TV stations picked up the story the week of June 9, but the outpouring of support from listeners had already begun.

“The community started with their support the very next day,” Garcia said.

Listeners were concerned and upset. Some even offered to donate money — which Butron declined.

“We didn’t just want to take their money,” Garcia said. “But we were overwhelmed by the support.”

Still, the financial impact is significant.

Former Engineer Lends a Hand
WGSF hired three engineers to work on restoration since the theft, including Lara, chief engineer at Flinn Broadcasting, which previously owned the station. He helped transition the station’s equipment when Burton purchased it in 2023.

As a bilingual engineer, Lara was the first person Butron contacted. Although he no longer has a vested interest in WGSF, he was happy to help.

“It’s a minority-owned station with a massive signal, and I couldn’t imagine the hurdles they would have to go through to get the signal restored,” Lara said.

Butron said the station’s first step after the incident was filing for the STA to operate 1030 AM at a reduced power of 100 watts.

A Beacon of Hope on FM
WGSF’s pending FM translator, 101.5 W268DP Memphis, was granted its license on June 11 under special operating conditions. Since the FM is licensed to broadcast from the same site as the AM signal, it had required a proof-of-performance test before and after translator construction. Due to the theft, the FCC waived that requirement for a 12-month period.

The 101.5 translator had been previously associated with Butron’s other AM station, 1180 WGUE(AM), licensed to Turrell, Ark.

Butron made a Facebook Live video explaining the situation and announcing the launch of the 101.5 FM signal.

In a small bit of luck, Lara said the coaxial line leading to the FM antenna had been pulled violently, possibly shifting the antenna — but not enough to disconnect it nor disrupt it from producing its licensed transmitter power output of 34 watts.

The vandals would have needed to cross a fence to reach the FM antenna directly.

“They went for what was visible and directly in their sight,” Lara said.

But the damage was already extensive.

“One piece of a phasor costs thousands,” he said.

Based on how equipment was moved around at the site between his visits, Lara believes the vandals returned a second time after the initial break-in. Memphis Police told WREG they got a tip that men were seen dragging cables toward National Ave. the day of the burglary, and then another tip that several people were seen burning the copper wiring.

Lara is in contact with Kintronic Labs about rebuilding the phasor cabinet or purchasing a new one, along with a replacement tuning unit, on the long road back to restoring the station’s full-power AM signal.

Butron and Garcia said that for now, WGSF is airing music only, but full programming will resume this week.

Hispanic Community Voice Silenced
Lara said the station is unique to the area, one of only two Spanish-langauge stations on the dial, with Butron’s 1180 AM “La Jefa” being the other. “That is a big facet of the Memphis community that they serve,” he said. “They didn’t deserve this.”

The Butron website explains that the couple, originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, traveled to Tennessee beginning in 1999 for vacations and fell in love with its culture. They observed a language barrier between immigrants in the area and natives. That motivated them to close the communications gap.

The couple had previous operated WGSF, dating back to 2014, under a time brokerage agreement, before purchasing it outright from Flinn Broadcasting.

Ivette Butron Ramos is noted as the first Hispanic in Memphis and second statewide to operate and own a radio station. She was named one of the top 10 “Women of the Bluff” by the website We Are Memphis in March.

Copper Thievery Cases Continue
Walton, Goodman and Yarbrough were charged with burglary of a building, theft of property, and tampering with evidence, according to WREG(TV).

Court proceedings are ongoing. Butron and Lara were present at a hearing on June 13. Lara said that camera footage from around when the incident occurred is still being reviewed.

[Related: “Letter: How We Caught Copper Thieves With an FBI Assist”]

Radio World noted an apparent increase in reports of copper thefts at transmitter sites within the last year at both AM and FM stations. One reader said their station had been hit three times in a five-year period.

utron urges other broadcasters to remain vigilant. He said he’s already heard from station owners in West Memphis, Knoxville and Little Rock who’ve also experienced copper theft.

They all agree: Stations need to keep security tight. Keep fences locked and cameras running.

Comment on this or any article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

With the U.S. economy in a state of flux as the Trump Administration tightens — and subsequently laxes — the flow of imports into the country, tariffs have been top of mind for many manufacturers, including those in the broadcast industry.

At the 2025 NAB Show this past April, as the Radio World team wandered from booth to booth, we asked exhibitors how they might be impacted by these ever-changing tariffs.

Their answer was simple: “We’re not sure, yet.”

For some broadcast manufacturers that import many of their materials from other countries like China, the situation looked rather bleak as the U.S. levied a 145% tax on Chinese goods.

For other U.S. companies that manufacture most of their materials in-house, the outlook is much sunnier. Broadcast equipment manufacturer Wheatstone is one of those companies, building all of its products at its factory in New Bern, N.C.

Wheatstone says 99% of all its metal extrusions were made in the U.S. Additionally, the company does all its own painting and uses powder coat paint that it buys from other U.S. companies. Finally, all the machinery Wheatstone has for fabricating, metal and surface mounting components are supported by U.S.-friendly companies, according to Wheatstone CEO and Founder Gary Snow.

“It took years and years for us to build all that here in the USA,” said Snow, “and I’ll admit there were times when I wondered if it was such a smart thing to do, but I don’t question it now.”

While Snow told Radio World that Wheatstone largely remains unaffected, that doesn’t mean his company isn’t aware of how these “reciprocal tariffs” have been affecting the industry as a whole. Snow specifically references the strain put on container shipping and the freight industry.

“Companies that build offshore could be paying two and a half times more for containers of finished goods. That’s hundreds of thousands, possibly a million dollars more than what they had set aside — just to open the container,” said Snow. “This could very well threaten the stability of those companies if all their cash reserves are going to containers instead of to business as usual.

“At the very least, it will cost broadcasters more without any real benefit added to the products they buy, or worse, make it harder to get parts and support when they need it,” he said.

It’s important to note that, as previously mentioned, the state of global tariffs remains in great flux, with manufacturers scrambling to keep updated about ongoing changes. To that point, these quotes from Wheatstone executives were obtained by Radio World on May 9, just prior to an unexpected announcement made a few days later.

On Monday, May 12, the United States and China announced that they would suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days. Under the agreement, the U.S. would reduce the tariff on Chinese imports to 30% from its current 145%, while China would lower its import duty on American goods to 10% from 125%.

When asked which of Wheatstone’s necessary components could be subjected to these tariffs, Snow only listed one product: semiconductors.

“Semiconductors are excluded from excessive tariffs at this time, but even a 145% tariff on a 10-cent transistor is not much in the scheme of things,” said Snow. “As a manufacturer that makes just about everything except the semiconductors that go into our products, we are far more concerned with price fluctuations and the availability of components than the tariffs on those components, which is why we doubled down on parts inventory.”

Wheatstone Purchasing Manager Pattye Bagshaw said, even before the tariffs kicked in, she began padding inventory so Wheatstone would have more than enough parts to last through next year.

Snow told Radio World that this practice of keeping a spare supply of stock in-house is a holdover from the pandemic, and the desire to not be caught shorthanded.

“We are a well-oiled machine when it comes to ordering and stocking parts,” said Snow. “We buy from parts distributors in the U.S. that we’ve known for years and have direct relationships with all our major semiconductor manufacturers. In fact, Xilinx (which makes a critical FPGA used in Wheatstone products) put us on their priority list during Covid when it was hard to get parts because a lot of people were buying them up and scalping them.”

Even with extensive preparations, Wheatstone hasn’t been totally exempt from hiked prices. Bagshaw said they recently received a shipment from China and were hit with a 170% tariff.

(Read: Optimism Clashes With Tariff Anxieties at 2025 NAB Show)

“This was for printed circuit boards,” said Bagshaw. “Wheatstone outsources the printing of circuit boards but designs and surface-mounts components in-house. We have since been able to move that business to vendors that we know of elsewhere and have worked with in the past.”

As for changes to product pricing, Wheatstone Senior Sales Manager Jay Tyler said, well, there is none.

“We have finished products on the shelf and are ready to ship at the same price now as before tariffs began,” said Tyler. “Although, tariffs here can have a snowball effect on our international customers especially because they’re already paying import tariffs on top of the price of products coming into their country.”

At the most recent NAB Show, Tyler said he heard about several manufacturers handing out new price lists with price increases spurred by the tariffs.

“I also heard that people who are rolling out new automation systems or other PC-centric systems were gobbling up computers while they could to avoid tariffs, and that could affect the supply chain,” he said.

Stressors on the supply chain, and potential increased costs on consumers continue to be a concern for manufacturers and buyers alike.

Per the Yale Budget Lab’s latest report on May 12, consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.8% — the highest since 1934 — which is estimated to dent households’ annual purchasing power by $2,800.

For Tyler’s customers, however, he isn’t worried.

“My customers want the same things they’ve always wanted. They want to be able to afford to move their studios if the rent goes up in their old building. They want to be able to pay for a new console to replace that older board that’s long overdue for retirement,” he said.

“From our perspective, tariffs should have very little effect on whether they can still do those things.”

TV Tech is delighted to reveal the winners of the 2024 Media & Entertainment: Best in Market Awards.

The awards recognize standout products and solutions that have been brought to market over the last 12 months and are comprised of three Future-brand categories: TV Tech, TVBEurope, and Radio World.

Congratulations to this year’s winners in the TV Tech category:

• MCP-FLEX Channels—Akta
• Ateliere Live—Ateliere Creative Technologies
• X4 Ultra—BirdDog Technology Ltd
• Blackmagic PYXIS 6K—Blackmagic Design
• BG-8K-88MA | 8x8 8K UHD HDMI 2.1 Matrix Switcher with Audio De-embedder—BZBGEAR
• Canon EOS C80—Canon
• Gen-IC—Clear-Com
• Dejero GateWay 3220 Network Aggregation Solution—Dejero
• AxisCtrl—Electric Friends
• JKD Solar Powered Marquee—Jungle Power
• Maxon One—Maxon
• MK.IO Beam—MediaKind
• QuickLink StudioEdge—QuickLink
• Artimo—Ross Video
• BRC-AM7 Flagship PTZ Camera—Sony Electronics
• A20-SuperNexus—Sound Devices, LLC
• TAG Operator Console—TAG Video Systems
• tx darwin—Techex
• Zixi Market Switching—Zixi

Legendary broadcast engineer Dick Burden has died. He passed on Saturday, peacefully in his sleep, according to a post on the Facebook page of the Los Angeles chapter 47 of the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

He was 92.

“It is not often in life that you meet someone who loves his family, friends and profession like Richard Burden,” the chapter post reads. “He gave 200% to everything he did with a smile on his face and love in his heart. We are all better people having known him.”

Richard W. Burden, born in 1931, played an influential role in several facets of broadcast engineering in the mid to late 20th century, including FM stereo, TV/radio audio engineering and the creation of the Traveler’s Information Service.

Yet decades into the 21st century, he remained a visible presence at trade shows and an active supporter of organizations like the L.A. SBE chapter.

According to the website of his firm Burden Associates, Burden originated the concept of initiating a control carrier as a means of switching from FM mono to FM stereo when stereophonic programming was present and adding an indicator that became known as the stereo light.

He was called "the father of the Traveler’s Information Service" for his work on the original TIS facility at the Los Angeles International Airport and the establishment of 530 and 1610 kHz as the original TIS operating frequencies.

In television he suggested a means to improve signal-to-noise performance to the proposed Stereophonic Television standard while maintaining authorized occupied bandwidth and de facto monophonic deviation, according to the website.

Burden became SBE member No. 450 in 1966 and was an original member of SBE Chapter 1 in Binghamton, N.Y., according to a 2005 profile article in Broadcast Engineering.

He helped organize Chapter 47 in Los Angeles, serving as its second chairman and as program chairman from 1979–1981. Maria Laing, current vice chair of the chapter, told RW: “He was a kind man who was happy to share his knowledge and time with anyone who asked. He always showed up with a smile on his face and love in his heart. In honor of his memory I challenge everyone to do something nice for someone today and to make a donation to SBE in his honor.”

Early Days
His career started as a student at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., where he was appointed chief engineer of college radio station WJRH in 1950. He transferred to RCA Institutes to study Radio Broadcast Engineering and graduated in 1952, holding a 1st Class Radio-Telephone License.

In 1952, according to the profile article, he was appointed to the Signal School in Fort Monmouth, N.J., as a civilian instructor. “Dick was assigned to the Armed Forces Radio Service in New York as staff engineer and was released from active duty with citations as a staff sergeant in 1955,” the article stated.

“He was employed at General Precision Laboratory for five years doing circuit design of audio-video and pulse modules, technical writing for video systems and engineering on the Air Traffic Control System for the Federal Aviation Administration.”

In 1958, he worked on the development of a system of stereo broadcasting in conjunction with Multiplex Development Corp. and held a patent in that field.

In 1960 he formed Burden Associates in Mount Kisco, N.Y. and in 1972, opened an office in Canoga Park, Calif.

Engineering Honors
He also served on the Ad Hoc Committee for the Study of Television Sound (ACHSTS); as a member of the Broadcast Transmission Systems Committee (BTS) on the study of Stereophonic Sound of Television; and as a member of the National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC) working toward improvements in radio broadcasting in the early 1990s.

He was a former chair of the AES Los Angeles Section and former Western Region vice president of AES.

He was also a founding member and original chief engineer of the Audio Internet Reading Service of Los Angeles, which he served as president and chairman.

Burden achieved the rank of Fellow in the Society of Broadcast Engineers and the Audio Engineer Society, and was a Life Member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

He was honored by the Audio Engineering Society in 1998 on its Golden Anniversary as one of 25 internationally known audio engineers who had made significant contributions to the art and science of audio during the preceding 50 years.

The Society of Broadcast Engineers honored him in 2005 with its Lifetime Achievement Award for what was then already 55 years of service.

A 1995 oral history interview with Richard Burden is available, conducted by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center. He discussed his work at Fort Monmouth and at Armed Forces Radio and his interest in hi-fi recording and FM. He describes his work with Bill Halstead in creating and demonstrating a proposed FM system as members of the National Stereo Radio Committee as well as his work in television sound and the National Radio Systems Committee, and the work he and Halstead did at the Los Angeles airport and the FCC’s consequent request that Burden remain in California to provide the Commission with data on the system.

You can read that oral history here: https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Richard_Burden

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World. 

Robert De Niro won’t be receiving the Service to America Leadership Award from the NAB Leadership Foundation after all.

“While we strongly support the right of every American to exercise free speech and participate in civic engagement, it is clear that Mr. De Niro’s recent high-profile activities will create a distraction from the philanthropic work that we were hoping to recognize,” said NAB spokesman Alex Siciliano in a statement, confirming that the award has been rescinded.

“To maintain the focus on service of the award winners, Mr. De Niro will no longer be attending the event.”

The Celebration of Service to America Awards will be held at a venue in Washington next Tuesday.

The earlier announcement that the actor would be honored came on the same day that De Niro and two former Capitol police officers appeared outside the courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush money trial was finishing to voice support for the Biden campaign and criticize Trump’s record. De Niro was heckled by Trump supporters and engaged in a shouting match with them.

As reported by the Associated Press, a Biden adviser said De Niro and the officers were not there to talk about the Trump trial specifically but to exploit the media presence around the legal proceedings. AP also reported that Trump advisers said the Biden team’s presence validated Trump claims that his prosecutions are driven by politics.

Siciliano called the Service to America event “proudly bipartisan” and said “We look forward to a night of celebration honoring the exceptional work of broadcasters and our partners who make a difference in their communities every day.”

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared in our sister publication Radio World.]

WASHINGTON—A proposed new event code to deliver broadcast alerts about missing and endangered adults is moving ahead at the FCC.

As TV Tech sister brand Radio World reported earlier, the commission planned to consider whether to open a notice of proposed rulemaking. It did so this week unanimously.

“Adding a new ‘Missing and Endangered Persons’ event code to the nation’s Emergency Alert System would help law enforcement agencies to issue timely alerts in accordance with the Ashanti Alert Act and galvanize public attention to these cases,” the FCC said in a press release.

“Similar to how law enforcement agencies successfully use Amber Alerts on TV and radio to help mobilize public attention and recover abducted children, this new Missing and Endangered Persons event code would trigger Ashanti Alerts to sound the alarm over other missing and endangered persons.”

Here is the text of the NPRM, as released in draft form prior to the vote.

The FCC says that in the United States in 2022, about 187,000 adults went missing but fell outside of the criteria for Amber or Silver Alerts. It says the new code would be particularly beneficial to native and indigenous women who have disappeared.

The federal Ashanti Alert Act of 2018 established a voluntary nationwide communication network to aid in the search and recovery of missing adults. It was named in honor of Ashanti Billie, who was abducted and killed in 2017.

Noting that alert originators use EAS by selecting from a list of codes — such as CAE for a Child Abduction Emergency, known as an Amber Alert — the FCC is asking for comment on creating an MEP alert code.

The commission noted that several states, territories and tribal communities have Ashanti Alert plans or missing/endangered person plans, or legislative proposals in the works. It wants comments about how those would fit in with its own plan. It’s also asking for comments on whether and how this idea could be used with the Wireless Emergency Alert system, which does not use event codes.

Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement that violence against Native women has a long history. “The cruel reality is that we continue to have a crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people, and it is especially acute for women and girls in tribal communities.” She said the success of Amber Alerts over three decades shows that the event code approach works.

Rosenworcel credited Native Public Media for its efforts to call attention to the issue of missing indigenous persons.

[Read a blog post on this issue from Native Public Media.]

As with other non-presidential EAS alerts, whether stations carry Ashanti Alerts and use the MEP event code would be voluntary. As far as what would be required on the broadcaster side, the FCC noted that EAS participants are required to have equipment capable of being upgraded by software to accommodate modifications. Stations would not be required to add the code until their equipment or software was replaced. The FCC added, “We also see no reason why a new event code could not be bundled with a software upgrade that EAS participants would otherwise install anyway, during the regular course of business.”

Once the NPRM has been published in the Federal Register, the comment deadlines will be set. Comments should be made in the FCC online system under PS Dockets 15-91 or 15-94.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World. 

FM6 stations have until Jan. 29 to officially state their intention to continue service and to confirm their operational parameters to the FCC.

These stations are the low-power TV broadcasters that operate as radio stations on frequencies just below the FM band, a practice that earned them the nickname Franken FMs.

Last summer, the FCC ruled that 14 such stations in nine states can continue to provide these analog radio services. They essentially have been grandfathered in, resolving the longstanding regulatory issue.

Many of the stations are in or near major markets, so this outcome essentially means that several big U.S. cities now officially have one more FM station for the many consumers whose radios can pick up the frequencies.

The authorized stations are KBKF(LD), San Jose, Calif.; WMTO(LD), Norfolk, Va.; KXDP(LD), Denver; WTBS(LD), Atlanta; WRME(LD), Chicago; KZNO(LD), Big Bear Lake, Calif.; KEFM(LD), Sacramento; WEYS(LD), Miami; WDCN(LD), Fairfax, Va., near Washington, D.C.; KRPE(LD), San Diego; KGHD(LD), Las Vegas; WPGF(LD), Memphis; and WNYZ(LD), New York. 

The FCC also permitted WVOA(LD) in Westvale, N.Y., near Syracuse, to provide FM6 service subject to certain requirements. That FM6 went back on the air in December at 87.7 MHz.

The commission will not allow new FM6 entrants or the return of other legacy analog FM6 stations that ceased or never previously provided radio service. “Effective immediately, the bureau will not process STA extension requests filed by any FM6 LPTV stations … The bureau also will promptly dismiss any STA requests for new FM6 operations.”

The Media Bureau has set Jan. 29 as the deadline for the 14 stations to notify it of their intent to continue to provide FM6 service and to confirm their operational parameters.

The bureau said all FM6 LPTV stations with unexpired STAs or pending STA extensions will be considered in compliance with its rules as long as their operations adhere to the recent order. Once an operational notice is received, the bureau will add a notation to each LPTV station’s license to reflect that it is permitted to provide FM6 operations as an ancillary or supplementary service. 

These stations are required to maintain online public inspection files for their FM6 service. The FCC also reminded them that television stations that offer feeable ancillary or supplementary services are required to submit an annual report and pay a fee on the revenues from those services. If an FM6 LPTV station offers such services it must pay the fee. 

Details and instructions for the stations are outlined in the order (read it here).

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World. 

ALEXANDRIA, VA--NewBay has announced a new event for video, AV and IT professionals, to be held in Washington in late November, called Time2 Show.

It said the Time2 Show will serve professionals focused on “Transforming Information & Media for Entertainment and Enterprise” — hence the “e2”.

The event will comprise four concurrent shows: the 23rd Government Video Expo, the DC Post | Production Conference and two new shows: AV Technology Live and Creative Planet Con. It will be held Nov. 27–29 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

GV Expo 2018 will be the centerpiece of the Time2 Show and will again include the National Drone Show.

NewBay Managing Director of Content Paul McLane said, “from security to communications, video technology is transforming government and enterprise, creating incredible potential for the professionals, manufacturers and service providers serving this expanding market.”

AV Technology Live is for AV and experiential design professionals. The conference is an expansion of NewBay’s 2017 AVIT Summit.

Creative Planet Con will be a free showcase for video creators “at every level of experience and professionalism.”

DC Post | Production Conference is a production/postproduction training and educational event developed in partnership with Future Media Concepts.

NewBay Chief Content Officer Joe Territo said, “Not only are we focusing on the latest technology from the video and AV/IT enterprise marketplaces, but we are also looking at future-facing opportunities and best practices in order to give attendees a multi-dimensional experience they can’t find anywhere else.”

For example, the floor will feature three theaters featuring content about technology, best practices and tutorials, as well as new “Need to Know” segments focused on cybersecurity, blockchain, 5G and AI, as well as a returning Drone Cage.

By collocating the events, NewBay said it expects to double overall attendee traffic from past Government Video Expos and that the DC location provides proximity to many video, AV and IT pros who live within 150 miles of the federal capital.

NewBay is the parent of brands like TV Technology, Government Video, Radio World, Radio magazine, Creative Planet Network, AV Technology and Tech & Learning. It is now part of Future PLC after being acquired earlier this month.