NEW BERN, North Carolina — It has come to our attention that broadcast engineers are rapidly disappearing. Too many are aging out and too few are entering, and, increasingly, engineers are missing from critical studio projects.
“There’s so much that falls under the engineering role, and it’s hard to find that today. Those older guys are either gone or retired and the engineers that remain are so competent that their time becomes valuable,” said Jason Houts, director of engineering at Los Angeles-based Lotus Communications.
Houts recently filled a chief engineering role for a regional station cluster, but not before moving four stations into a new studio facility a day’s drive from his office. There was no onsite engineer throughout the design, planning, build-out and implementation of the new studios, due largely to a broadcast engineering shortage.
Houts is hardly alone. “It’s not like you can pick up the phone and press Extension 2 and an engineer will show up,” commented Mark Lee, the operations manager for Compass Media in the Cayman Islands, who installed an entire four-station studio in less than 45 days without the benefit of an onsite engineer. “We truly are on a little island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea,” lamented Lee, whose words easily describe how many broadcasters feel these days.
The impact of the engineering shortage
How can broadcasters navigate the engineering shortage? I asked Jay Tyler, our sales engineer, who has worked on hundreds of studio projects over the years and is the technology partner for some of Wheatstone’s largest customers around the world. Here are his five things broadcasters can do today to lessen the impact of the engineering shortage:
- Standardize on equipment, and not just for failover redundancy reasons.
Tyler said standardizing makes it much easier to maintain and troubleshoot remotely by a shrinking pool of qualified engineers. An ideal standardization plan would include automation and AoIP systems, consoles, transmitters, STLs and audio processors and a reliable, qualified team of technology partners. - Use IT tools and apps as your engineering eyes, ears and arms.
No app can replace an experienced broadcast engineer, but there are tools and apps that can help an engineer monitor, troubleshoot and resolve issues remotely. System management protocols like SNMP in various network gear can be the eyes and ears of the remote engineer by monitoring and managing data from servers, switches, hubs and IP audio networks. Other more broadcast-specific tools and apps such as AoIP metering, navigation and scripting software can help monitor and trigger automatic failovers to alternative equipment or paths before an experienced engineer can intervene. “Once you’re able to get everything on a common platform, you can monitor and control it,” said Tyler. - Networks are for transmitters, too.
Audio codec manufacturers tell us that more broadcasters are connecting transmitter sites, mainly because it gives them backup redundancy. We’re seeing more I/O Blades being repurposed and put at transmitter sites as an extension of the studio for this reason. For operators like Compass, linking transmitter properties is a critical first step as engineering resources dwindle and help becomes further away. “If something happened and we were a station down, we could literally send any programming to any transmitter because it’s all in the same WheatNet network,” explained Lee. - Develop your Tiger Team.
Upskilling existing engineering teams is far more economical and efficient than trying to replace them, especially if those skills can be readily acquired from manufacturers and technology partners sharing similar technology goals. Houts makes the point that there is no substitute for a competent chief engineer, which is why local chief engineers or contractors maintain most Lotus facilities in 10 major markets. But when it comes to a once-in-a-blue-moon event like a new studio, he has found that technology partners are more efficient and bring valuable expertise. Having a team of experts — or what one of our customers calls their Tiger Team — makes sense. Your Tiger Team can include staff engineers and IT technicians and/or contract engineers, specialized systems integrators, network specialists and broadcast manufacturers, all of whom can fill different roles at different times in the life of a facility. - Simplicity is the shortest distance between two points.
We cannot overstate the importance of simplicity to fast-track workflows and troubleshooting. Lotus, for example, uses AoIP salvos and macro sequences and integrates touchscreens into studios, all of which simplifies things overall and saves on hardware maintenance. At the very least, Tyler suggests broadcasters remote into the AoIP network for regular maintenance and occasional troubleshooting, which can save time for staffed engineers and greatly lessen the impact of the engineering shortage overall.
Finally, no article on the engineering shortage is complete without recognizing the many efforts to bring more engineers in and keep existing ones. We’ve worked with so many schools and lower-powered nonprofits that do an excellent job of training future engineers and with organizations like the Society of Broadcast Engineers that provide engineering skills training and mentorships.
The author is the marketing director for Wheatstone, maker of the WheatNet IP audio network.
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