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Some freqently asked questions about the television industry.

My wife and I both work in the communications industry. She started out working for WNUV TV-54 in Baltimore then moved on to WFTY TV 50 (WBDC now)in DC. Now she works at C-Span. I took a slightly different path to end up in the same place. I started, with a recommendation from her, at channel 50 in DC. Then I moved on to a Satellite uplink facility in Virginia (anyone familiar with the area would know it as WITATCTeleportsVerestar, more name changes than Prince!). Finally I moved to C-Span.

Whenever we tell someone what we do, they ask some common questions.

Click on a topic you want to know about

What kind of jobs are there?

Advanced Television news and information
(updated often)

Behind the scenes

While you might think that operating a television station is no different than pressing play on your VCR but a lot of work goes into making a days worth of programming look seamless. This section deals with the equipment that makes it happen.

The source for what you watch on TV has two possible sources, a camera/microphone or a recording device (most commonly tape). The camera is used for live programs, recorded material speaks for itself.

The signal from these goes through a device called a Distribution amplifier (3 actually, 1 video and 2 for audio)

The DA is used to amplify the signal for distribution around the plant (some cable distances can be thousands of feet!)

The rear of an audio and video da rack.

From there, it's on to the router. Think of a router as an easy way to plug things in, without it, we would need to use 3 cables for everywhere we wanted a signal to go, if we wanted it to go 100 places, we would need 300 cables (and a whole lot of da units, they only serve for 6 to 8 outputs.) With the router, I can route one signal to hundreds of destinations without picking up one cable.

The router feeds all the destinations in the plant. These include the next stop in our tour, the Master Control room. In a properly designed room an operator has total control over all the devices necessary to get that signal to you. Gone are the days of countdowns, headsets, and running around to perform normal day to day operations at a common television station.

In the control room there are switchers, character generators, cart machines (those voices you hear over credits come from these), and monitors for all the tape machines that are used.

The signal from master control goes from there into 3 DA units and through the router to its final destination. That destination can be a transmitter, a satellite uplink facility, or a cable head end (where those local access channels come from)

An example of a Satellite Uplink Facility (a better image is on its way).

Jobs in the industry.

While you may hear talk of automation in television, the simple fact is that if the automation breaks down, somebody has to get the programming and commercials ($$$) on the air. The jobs we know the most about are the in the technical sector. For my money, they're the people that really make the place.

Master Control

First the job that we know the most about, and the lowest man on the totem pole--the Master Control Operator (MCO). This is the most nitty gritty, time sensitive, nerve wracking job you can find....but with all that, it's great. If you get a kick out of doing live theatre, this is an outlet you'll like. Unlike most other jobs in this field, everything you do is instantly done, whether you've done it right or wrong, it's immediate. No chance to reevaluate your paperwork, just need to make things right as soon as possible. You'll work with every department in the place and you have to master almost all of the equipment. YOU are responsible for monitoring the Transmitter and making sure that the station is within FCC power regulations. You notify the chief engineer as soon as there is a problem (there are always problems) and he fixes it. But if you go an entire shift over or under power without notifying someone, you're toast. You can expect to make anywhere from 20 to 30 thousand in this position (this is the DC market values, depending on your location, you could make 60 thousand, or minimum wage).

Engineering

Now the job I want to get into, engineering. I get a big kick out of diagnosing, building and fixing systems. While almost anyone who works in this position has some electronics training, that is not enough. You almost have to feel the equipment. You also need to be very careful in performing your job as some of the systems you work with are high voltage and can be lethal. Being skilled with your hands also makes this job a little easier. Believe it or not, there are engineers out there that can make the prettiest plans on paper that can't even put together the simplest connector! Depending on your skills and the market, you can make anywhere from 25 to 100 thousand in this position.

Other positions in the industry

There are other positions, most that are self explanatory in their title:
Director
Camera Operator
Sound engineer
Tape operator
Floor Director
Prodution Assitant (gopher)

There are also administrative positions such as Traffic, Programming, Sales and Accounting. While many of these people are top notch professionals, we have run into those that have absolutely no understanding of the industry. They're fun to work with, and it is very hard to keep a straight face when they come in with an off the wall request which your facility can't possibly provide.

The Future of Television in America

The internet revolution came at an opportune time. Information transfer and the instantaneous availability of data caused the FCC and other government agencies to give some long hard thought to what would be the next step in television technology.

If you're familiar with HDTV then you know that it has been available for years in Japan. Everyone in the US (including me) wanted the FCC to clear the Japanese format for use here. The problem was incompatibility with the current system, the bandwidth for our NTSC signal is 6 Mhz. With all the information needed for an HDTV picture, the bandwith increased. With cellular phones, pagers and such becoming more and more popular, frequency allocation is at a prime. What was the answer?

Along comes compression technology, MPEG, MPEG2, JPEG and the like. Industry in this country, in their search for a new system (and of course, the almighty dollar) found tricks to compressing a signal so that HDTV would only take the 6Mhz that NTSC did. As an added benefit, since the compression design actually leaves plenty of room depending on the picture being transmitted, data for other items (your computer) can be sent along with the signal.

Thanks to patience by the FCC and other agencies, rather than deal with analog signals for our television future, we'll have the benefit of Digital Television (Advanced Television, as it has been called in the news).

Until the system is implemented and various subsystems are designed for use with it, we can't know for sure what this means to you and me, but I can predict one thing (with apologies to Al Jolson) "you ain't *seen* nothing yet!"

Well it's about 3 years after I wrote up that send up of advanced or digital television, and what have we learned? We've learned that Best Buy is nuts if they think I'm spending 13K on a plasma screen monitor! We've also learned that they'll be talking this subject to death until the cows come home.

We face an interesting time with technology. We advance with new stuff faster than we can implement the wide scale distribution of the old stuff. There's the problem. When a format is decided upon and legislation implemented to begin use, the new better design is already on the drawing board...so you have a decision being slowed by "if you just wait a couple of months...." and so on. What to do?

Well, I think the concept of HDTV monitors is nice. Gives you, the consumer a chance to have something that should be compatible with whatever they come out with, assuming you want to buy the converter box. Not sure with the complexity of the digital streams that I want an all in one unit honestly.

Here's a tidbit for you. The bandwidth allocated for HDTV in the US is 19 Megahertz, that's 13 more megahertz than an analog signal. But guess what, with new and better compression schemes, they got the amount needed down to 7 MHz! That means that broadcasters can send 2 HDTV signals and some highly compressed SDTV (standard definition TV) on the 19 MHz. Could they use the SD channels to fullfill their community service clause? Could they use that bandwidth to pay for their operations by selling it to consumers for internet? The questions are there, the answers are plentiful and contradictory.

My opinion of all this is, get with it. Start selling the sets. Mass Produce the equipment we need. I want an HDTV monitor and a reprogrammable converter box similar to my Dish Network Satellite Receiver. They can update that receiver to incorporate the latest technology. If broadcasters got their act together and did software upgrades at night, coordinating the fact that if you're a Sony reciever you look at Channel 2, a Toshiba unit looks at Channel 4 and so on, so when the unit's not in use, it can upgrade using a data stream from a local channel.

If you have any comments or questions, let us know.

Comments, things we should check out or add? Please Email / knighton@cablespeed.com

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