WEBVTT

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There is a radio station somewhere in this country

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right now that's been silent for six months.

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Not because of a format flip or a business decision,

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because the transmitter failed and nobody noticed.

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That's not a metaphor. That's a real FCC enforcement

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case from 2024. The licensee told the commission

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they were unaware the station had gone silent

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because, well, they lacked any way to remote

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monitor it. This is the Tyler Woodward project

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and today I'm talking about where all the broadcast

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engineers went If you grew up listening to radio

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There was almost certainly a chief engineer behind

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the station that you loved You probably never

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heard their name. You never thought about them

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But they were the reason the signal was on the

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air. The transmitter was running and the tower

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lights were on at night so airplanes didn't fly

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into them. The chief engineer was the person

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who drove out at three in the morning when the

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transmitter quit working. They maintained the

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AM directional array, which is a complicated

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phasing system that keeps your station from interfering

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with other stations at night. They logged equipment.

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performance signed off on the public file ran

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the EAS test the emergency alert system that's

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the thing that interrupts programming when there's

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a tornado warning somebody had to make sure all

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that stuff worked that job it still exists at

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some stations public broadcasting is one of the

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places where this stuff is still taking seriously

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But in commercial radio that job is being hollowed

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out in ways that are starting to show up in enforcement

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files and copper theft reports and In FCC dockets

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that read like a technical inspection of a building

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Nobody has been inside of for two years Let's

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start with the numbers because they're pretty

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hard to argue with The Society of Broadcast Engineers

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is basically the professional organization for

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this field in 2012 they had over 5 ,000 members

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by 2025 that's down to roughly 4 ,000 and in

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their most recent membership drive they added

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49 new members 49 the average age of a working

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SBE member hit 53 .9 back in 2011. By the end

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of the 2010s it was close to 59. The SBE now

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describes their typical member as somewhere between

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50 and 70 years old with more than 30 years of

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experience. There's a projection that gets cited

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a lot in trade coverage right now. The industry

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needs about 5 ,100 broadcast engineers over the

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next decade to replace about 6 ,200 who are projected

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to retire. Now, I'm not good at math, but that's

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a gap of over a thousand people. And that's before

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you account for the fact that a lot of these

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replacement slots simply won't be funded. Now

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here's part of why medium wage for broadcast

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and sound technicians is around roughly 56 ,600

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bucks a year The median for computer and IT jobs

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is north of a hundred thousand if you're a technically

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minded person in your twenties trying to figure

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out where to build a career. I mean, the math's

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not hard. A certified radio engineer with the

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SPE credentials averages somewhere around 88

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,000. One consultant engineer in New England

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told the trade press that to get him into a staff

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job, The station would need to offer 130 ,000

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minimum, maybe 150 ,000 or 160 ,000 in a high

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cost of living market. Nobody's paying that.

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Not in commercial radio, not in 2026. And before,

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you know, anyone in the comments says, well,

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that's just the market. Yeah. And the market

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is also Making tower lights go dark and EAS boxes

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go unchecked. The market is not always right.

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Ask the pilot who almost clipped an unlit broadcast

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tower. So the question is, where did all the

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engineers go? And when did this whole trend start?

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The honest answer is 1996. The Telecom Act opened

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up radio ownership in ways that the industry

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hadn't seen before. Before it passed, the FCC

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capped how many stations a single company could

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own nationally and locally. After it passed,

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that cap was gone. Within five years of the act,

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the number of distinct radio owners dropped from

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About 5100 to about 3800 Clear channel alone

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grew to roughly 1200 stations They absorbed what

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had been roughly 70 separate companies When you

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own 1200 stations, you don't hire 1200 chief

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engineers You hire as few as you can get away

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with and cover the rest with whatever's left

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That model got refined over the next 25 years

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By the you know, by the time I heart media clear

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channel rebranded Emerged from bankruptcy in

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2019, you know, they had a specific playbook

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regional engineer clusters markets sharing engineers

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across geographic areas that Sometimes makes

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absolutely no sense I -25 corridor in Colorado

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and Wyoming. Fine. Those markets are close. Las

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Vegas, Riverside and San Diego sharing an engineer.

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Those are multiple hours apart by car. And a

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network operation center in Cincinnati that monitors

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everything remotely. They call the emergency

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response teams, Tiger teams. flying squads of

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engineers who get dispatched to major outages.

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That's what replaced the person who used to drive

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out from the next town over. In late 2024, I

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Heart Media made cuts that included Jeff Littlejohn,

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who had been their EVP of engineering since 1992.

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32 years at the company. The person who was a

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key architect of the original iHeartRadio app.

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Gone. His replacement is now overseeing 860 stations

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in 160 markets. Odyssey, formerly Intercom, runs

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a tech operations center out of Philadelphia.

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One centralized hub monitoring the entire company's

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technical operations across every market simultaneously.

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They have farm team training, Knox and Chicago,

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Denver, Philadelphia. In their March 2025 layoff

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round, a technical operations director in San

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Diego was let go after 35 years in broadcast,

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going back through Jefferson Pilot, Lincoln,

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Intercom, and Odyssey. When the engineers are

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gone, what do you get left? You have transmitter

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sites that nobody has physically visited in months.

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You have AM directional arrays which need periodic

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maintenance and proof of performance measurements

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that are just running on whatever the last engineer

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set up and hoping nothing drifts. You have tower

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lighting that nobody ever checks. And the FCC

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enforcement files are starting to show it. There's

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a 2024 case from Texas Corridor television they

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missed the national EAS test in 2018 Missed it

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in 2019 missed it in 2021 when the FCC Investigated

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the station manager said he believed he had performed

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the test correctly He had prepared an alert to

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use ahead of time because he didn't know how

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to receive and save the alert for playback, and

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didn't realize that each test alert is unique.

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That station got hit with a $369 ,190 fine. When

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the FCC said in that decision is worth reading

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directly, the licensee is responsible for the

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actions of its employees. It is not excused for

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violations due to staff error. Non -compliance

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over multiple years based on staff's claimed

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ignorance of the law shows minimal effort. The

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cause of the whole thing, by the way, personal

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turnover following a technical server failure.

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The engineer left. Nobody else knew. what to

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do. There's a 2026 inspection case from Michigan

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WSDS in Salem Township. The FCC showed up and

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found faded tower paint, extended lighting outages,

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inadequate fencing, no producible EAS log, no

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Chief operator signature on any of the logs no

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equipment performance measurements. No field

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strength measurements That is a near total collapse

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of routine engineering practice the transmitter

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site looked like the last engineer walked out

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and locked the door behind them and nobody ever

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went back and Then there's the copper theft situation,

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which is almost darkly funny, except that it's

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actually a public safety issue. In January, 2024,

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someone cut a guy wire on a 500 foot tower in

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Hugo, Oklahoma. The tower fell. KITX was silent

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for months. The copper sold for less than a hundred

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bucks. You know what the damage was? $500 ,000.

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In Alabama, an AM station, their entire 200 foot

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tower disappeared. The transmitter, the equipment,

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all of it just gone. Thieves cut the copper ground

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system from an AM station in Memphis. WGSF was

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off the air for six months. An AM station has

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a ground system. Copper buried in the soil around

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the base of the tower it can be hundreds of radials

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of copper wire the ground system is what makes

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the antenna work maintaining it is a routine

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part of keeping an am station in good shape when

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nobody is maintaining it well thieves they figured

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that out and the first sign anyone knows there's

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a problem is when the transmitter alarm fires

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and nobody responds Here's where all this lands

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for me my takeaway The local radio engineer wasn't

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just a maintenance person. They were the institutional

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memory of a station's technical plant They knew

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which transmitter had a quirk at a high temperature

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They knew which antenna had it, you know the

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tendency the ice up in February They knew the

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EAS box had been swapped in 2019 and needed a

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certain sequence to reset it correctly That knowledge

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doesn't live in a knock in Cincinnati. It doesn't

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get dispatched with the tiger team three days

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after the transmitter goes down. It lives in

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the person who shows up every week, does the

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logs, looks at the meters and catches the smallest

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little thing before it becomes a big thing. There

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are people trying to rebuild the pipeline. The

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WBA Duke Wright Institute had a new broadcast

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engineer. emphasis at UW Oshkosh. Alabama's broadcasters

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run a free training academy. Wake technical in

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North Carolina graduated 13 SBE certified engineers

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in 2025. These are real efforts and they matter.

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But there's still a gap of over a thousand people

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that need to come in over the next decade. And

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the pay is still Not there. And the job is still

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invisible until the tower falls or the lights

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go out or the tornado warning doesn't make it

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to air. I don't know that this gets fixed or

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how it's going to get fixed. I know it's not

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being talked about nearly enough. If you haven't

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yet subscribed to my show. Tyler Woodward project,

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tylerwoodward .me forward slash podcast. I'll

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catch you next week.