CINCINNATI—Joe Mack has been named chief revenue officer of equipment manufacturer at GatesAir. It is a newly formed position.

Meanwhile Rich Redmond has left the company after 23 years, a spokesman confirmed to TV Technology's sister publication Radio World. Redmond most recently held the title of president—managing director, international.

“Joe will take ownership of global sales activity in his new role, with all regional sales leaders across APAC, CALA, EMEA and North America reporting to him,” the company stated in a release.

Mack will continue to report to GatesAir CEO Bruce D. Swail.

Mack has been with GatesAir and its predecessor Harris for 30 years. He was promoted to vice president of sales for the Americas when GatesAir was formed in 2014, after holding leadership roles at Harris Corporation’s Broadcast Communications Division. “Joe was responsible for all U.S. spectrum repack sales efforts, which established GatesAir as the undisputed market share leader for broadcast transmission,” the company stated. He joined Harris through the acquisition of Midwest Communication in 1990.

Rich Redmond joined Harris in 1998, according to his LinkedIn page, and held several sales and business development roles. He has been a familiar face to visitors to the GatesAir booth at trade shows, and played an important role in that 2014 “carveout” of GatesAir from Harris six years ago. He started his career with Northeast Broadcast Lab in 1990. Redmond did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Radio World.

GatesAir is part of The Gores Group, a global investment firm.

CINCINNATI — GatesAir today announced five personnel moves to build its executive team, including the promotion of Rich Redmond to the role of president, GatesAir International.

Bruce Swail, CEO, created the executive-level management positions to maintain global revenue growth and profitability, the company said.

The other moves include:

• Ray Miklius, who becomes VP and GM, Television;
• Ted Lantz, promoted to VP and GM, Radio;
• Keyur Parikh, who now is VP and GM, Intraplex; and
• Tony Kobrinetz, who becomes VP of Engineering.

Redmond has held sales, product management and executive-level roles during his more than 20-year tenure with the company across all aspects of the business. Since the formation of GatesAir in 2014, he has served as chief product officer. “As we look beyond repack, we see substantial potential in our international markets,” said Swail.

Miklius, Lantz and Parikh have led their respective business units in director roles since the formation of GatesAir.

All five will be based at GatesAir’s U.S. offices in Mason, Ohio, and Quincy, Ill.

TV TECHNOLOGY:What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trend at the 2018 NAB Show?

RICH REDMOND: Broadcasters grow more comfortable with IP technologies in the broadcast infrastructure with each passing year. As solutions continue to grow more robust, reliable and intelligent, broadcasters are expanding their strategies to leverage IP as their main transport medium for content delivery. The flexibility IP brings in multipoint contribution and distribution is particularly compelling for broadcasters that are looking to eliminate the costs of point-based legacy networking, and introduce new video, audio and data services that can be delivered to consumers in the most efficient way possible.

ATSC 3.0 for next-generation television will also loom large. ATSC 3.0 ushers in a whole new paradigm where broadcast TV stations can transmit an IP stream rather than a broadcast-specific transport stream, and interface with the growing array of video services based on the Internet. It also provides a foundation for targeted content and advertisements, improved mobile reception and 4K HDR content delivery over the air that will help broadcasters level the playing field against competing TV services.

TVT:What will be your most important product news?

REDMOND: In television, we will be laser-focused on demonstrating our over-the-air content delivery solutions for repack and ATSC 3.0. With repack, we have announced several major station group wins with Hearst Television, Raycom Media, Cordillera, Heartland Media and Quincy Media, and to date have 20 sites with repack projects up and running. That’s important to point out because it validates the strength of our repack strategy across products and services, including complete site audits in advance of installations.

For products, we have completely revamped our entire TV transmission lineup over the past three years with our Maxiva UHF (ULXTE liquid-cooled and UAXTE air-cooled) and Maxiva VHF (VAXTE air-cooled) transmitters. Our next-generation Maxiva XTE exciter, with integrated IP inputs, brings it all together for both repack and ATSC 3.0 needs moving forward. Collectively, we offer the youngest transmission product line in the industry, albeit with field-proven technologies, performance and efficiency.

Since repack and ATSC 3.0 introduce new systems and processes—essentially a completely new, native IP infrastructure for the latter—we’ll emphasize our next-gen control, monitoring and security platforms. This includes advanced monitoring with our StreamAssure solution, an SNMP interface to remote controls via IP connectivity, and advanced security features powered through our Intraplex IPConnect solution.

We have also restructured the user interfaces on our Maxiva transmitters. These will now be HTML5-based, which removes the security vulnerabilities of Java and all together delivers a more simple and intuitive user experience.

TVT:How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

REDMOND: Key points include market-leading power density–for example, our VAXTE transmitter reduces rack space by two-thirds the amount of its predecessor–outstanding RF performance, and integration of the latest FET technology and high-power devices providing simplified channel changes without the need for failure-prone jumpers. The latter is critical to our achievement of parity power between ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0. That is important because our customers who buy for repack now do not need to invest in a larger ATSC 3.0 transmitter to achieve the same power levels as ATSC 1.0. We should also note that our Maxiva VAXTE transmitter is the first transmitter to support repack and ATSC 3.0 needs in low-band VHF.

TVT:What is it about the NAB Show that brings you back every year?

REDMOND: It’s hard to think of a better venue to meet new people and see old friends when it comes to the broadcast industry. NAB Show continues to be the premier world stage for broadcast and media professionals seeking to discover new technology, see products in person and meet face to face with their peers and collegaues. For us at GatesAir, that means an unrivaled opportunity to interact with customers and partners. This is a genuinely human benefit that can’t be replaced by webinars and virtual conferences.