The Transmitter guys. 

 

 

 

When you drive down route 128 and see the antenna farm spreading out before you, do you ever wonder about the work involved in keeping these very important aspects of our profession in operation?  Who operates them?  Rarely do we see these transmitter guys at the studios, they are not well known by most members. So I decided to go out and meet a few of them and find out about their daily work lives. Here are their words.

 

 

 

Doug Kehrig has worked for WHDH (channel 7) since 1982. All that time he has been assigned to the transmitter and is now the only full time person working there.  

 

 

 

Q.    Tell me about your job? Do you enjoy it?

 

A.     Oh, Yeah. It’s always something different.

 

Q         When you do leave the transmitter and visit the station, what goes through your mind?

 

A.        Well everybody there seems to know me, but I have a hard time remembering everyone’s name. There have been so many changes there over the years.

 

Q.        What was your job like when you first started out?

 

A.        When I first started here, Larry Weil, Dave Lawry and L.B.Hooker were all assigned out here full time. So there were four of us. We would sign off at midnight, really around 1 am. We would work on the transmitter overnight and we would do microwave sites, measurements on the bands. So there were four full time people. The transmitter was all vacuum tube – it was the RCA model that was replaced in 1984 for the Larcan Transmitter.

 

Q.        How did it happen that you are now the only one assigned here full time?

 

A.        Mostly because of all the lay-offs. They laid off Larry and sent L.B. and Dave back to work in the Studio. We had to give up some things. We no longer did preventive maintenance on the microwave vans. There were only four trucks back then, no satellite trucks.

 

Q.        How would you describe your job?  What do you do?

 

A.        It’s mostly electronic maintenance. Some measurements, keep the equipment running. I take care of the remote microwave sites. I do some work on the satellite trucks and the ENG trucks.  A lot of paperwork. Middle management is basically gone. We used to have several layers of middle management… that’s gone. 

 

Q.        So it sounds like you are basically here in case something goes wrong.

 

A.        The problems are few and far between, but when they do happen, there’s a lot of running around. Kind of like a fireman. There’s a lot of quiet and then there’s a lot of running around – fixing the transmitters. I’ve got 3 UHF digital transmitters and 3 VHF transmitters. 2 are in parallel and on is a stand-by. We need three just to make power. A tube only makes 20 kilowatts apiece, so we’ve got 60 kilowatts to make 55. We combine 3 amplifiers to get our licensed poser.

 

Q.        Do you have to take the equipment off-line very often?

 

A.        Not really. Some with the DTV, especially when we first got it. We had a lot of problems with it. Lately it’s been working well. We don’t go off the air, hardly ever as far as maintenance. We go on the auxiliary transmitter every Saturday morning, and I work on the main transmitter. But scheduled maintenance is just one night.

 

Q.        What about you?  Is there much down time for you?

 

A.        I always have something to do. There is always a project or two around here. Some are related to the studio and some for the news department. All kinds of special projects to work on.

 

Q.        Do you ever get stranded up here?

 

A.        Not very often, but I have been stuck here overnight more than once. It’s not as bad as upstate New York where I worked before coming here. With all the snows we used to get there, I learned to carry a sleeping bag with me. I still do.

 

Q.        What’s in the future? Do you see the day coming when no one will be here at the transmitter on a regular basis?

 

A.        Oh, yeah. As far as the transmitter goes, the new transmitter will be solid state and should be extremely reliable. The only thing is that this plant is a bit unusual as so many of our shows are taped through here for the satellite receivers. I don’t see that going away. All of CBS used to go through here. Now NBC goes into downtown Boston , the backup is out here. It’s routed through here and via microwave is sent to the studio. Very often we’ve got 4 or 5 satellite dishes in use at the same time, plus the inter city microwaves for Windham, Worcester and Foxborough all come through here.

 

Q.        Why did this area become the home to all the transmitters?

 

A.        When this antenna went up in 1963, the property values were very low. There was nothing here – except an industrial park. It’s all been built up since then. All these stores. I’ve watched all these businesses come into the area. There use to be just big open fields around here. Now it’s getting densely populated, but at the time, the land was cheap out here. The WBZ tower has quite a few acres of land under the tower, which is the way most guy towers are. They will buy a farm or other big piece of land so that they would have room for the guy wires. But this area is called Newton Highlands, so the base of our tower is about 100 feet above seal level. So there is a little bit of a hill out here.

 

Q.                Do you get lonely here by yourself?

 

A.                 It’s a pretty solitary life. We have had some people assigned to work here who couldn’t adjust. They didn’t like being away from the action downtown. Due to the lack of space in Boston , we park a couple of the trucks out here so I see the truck operators every day when they come to pick up their trucks for the day.

 

 

 

Marc Carbone – CBS-4, UPN-38, UPN-28

 

 

 

 

 

Q.                How long have you been with WBZ?

 

A.                 I worked for SBK since 1983 and when they merged with WBZ came over then.

 

Q.                How long have you worked in transmitters?

 

A.                 Only about ten years. I used to be on the TV-38 sports crew. I drove the truck, did video and TD’d and did maintenance.

 

 

 

Q.                How have the changes in transmitter work affected you?

 

A.                 Well I never worked during the era when there would be a lot of people involved in keeping up the transmitter. In all the time that I’ve spent working out here, it’s always been just one guy or perhaps two.  We take care of ten (10) transmitters. We take care of the site. We also take care of the SBK transmitter across the street (route 128), Channel 28 down in Freetown, and WBZ radio, as well as the radar up in Worcester where I’ve been for the past two days.

 

Q.                So you’re constantly on the move visiting various sites?

 

A.                 Exactly. And there’s a lot of stuff to maintain. Mostly preventive maintenance, but not always. The radar has been broken for a week or so.

 

Q.                Some people have the idea that you guys just sit around playing solitaire all day.

 

A.                 It’s not like that at all. They wouldn’t put you on a shift to do nothing. Yes, we are here to put out fires but we have a set schedule of things to do. Half a dozen generators to maintain and we run them every week. We have transmitters that we need to test – auxiliary transmitters. There’s hardly any time to sit around playing solitaire.

 

Q.                Does it get lonely?

 

A.                 Well I do work with another person Bob, who is my manager. We work together almost every day, so I’m at least around one other person. We also interface with the other tenants on the property (WCVB and WGBH). But when ‘Bob’s on vacation and the guy from Channel 2 is of, I can go for a week without talking to someone face to face.

 

Q.                Your tower requires a lot of space.

 

A.                 Well, yeah. We have wide guy wires. Not narrow guy wires like the candelabra tower. (It’s the one that has three antennas at the top and it services channels 25, 38 and 56)  We have about 40 acres here – all belonging to CBS, in the middle of Needham .

 

Q.                So CBS rents space to others on their tower?

 

A.                 Basically, everyone other than CBS is a tenant here. Now that does not apply to the new building over there. That is co-owned with the other two stations (CVB and GBH). Three stations went in on the building and the tower modifications that were required to get the digital transmitters in.

 

 

 

Q.                How many signals are coming off this tower?

 

A.                 Well I can’t tell you how many cell phone signals are on here.  How many two -way radios and pagers and stuff like that, but basically there’s 2, 5, and 4 analog. Then all the associated digitals – so that’s six right there. Then we have Channel 39, which Ch. 38’s digital signal, so that’s seven. Plus we have an auxiliary transmitter for Ch. 38 analog here. So on a given day, you can have 8 major TV signals coming out of these antennas.

 

Q.                How is that advent of digital and HDTV going to affect you?

 

A.                 Someone, somewhere can make a decision and turn off these expensive energy using transmitters. It costs a lot of electricity. Electricity is our raw material. We turn lots of electricity into a TV signal – Analog and Digital RF.

 

 

 

Dick Anderson has been working with transmitters for the past 45 years. He now works for WCVB-TV but they opt not to have a full time person at the transmitter, sending him and others out to the sites just once per week.

 

Q.                Tell me about the changes you’ve seen in this industry.

 

A.                 I’ve worked in transmitters my entire professional life. I started out in small-time radio – AM and FM. I worked with a great bunch of people. I worked for RKO back in the late 60’s and early 70’s. In radio – RKO and ROR. Great bunch of people. Back then, all the stations were fully staffed. We didn’t have remote controls at that time. The transmitter guys were all unique individuals. They knew their stuff and they were great human beings. I was the youngster of the group. A lot of the guys were from the Yankee Network, and many of them were due to retire soon. I felt very privileged throughout my life, even in small time radio to work with a wonderful bunch of people. Over the years, the companies all moved towards remote control systems and many people retired. Back then the management made you feel that you were part of the whole operation. Not very many people knew anything about the transmitters, but the people in power and in management – they certainly knew. The whole package worked pretty well. But transmitters have become of diminished importance. Pretty much it’s gotten to the point, where the transmitter is not considered important, because, as I’ve been told, we are on cable. If the transmitter were to go down, we would lose maybe 10% of our viewers. 90% of our audience is on cable and that’s what’s important. With that in mind, there’s no reason to have a full time transmitter person.

 

Q.                How does Cable get the signal?

 

A.                 They mostly get it from fiber. There are some that take it off the air, but in the company’s view it’s not that important any more. To emphasize that belief – they are no longer staffing the transmitter. It’s run by remote control. Not only that, but we don’t need a person there every day of the week. Instead, we just send someone out once a week on average.  The last time we had someone out there full time was about 3 or 4 years ago. Now to get vacuum tubes or parts for the Transmitter is a major thing. It’s considered an expense that they really don’t find to be worthwhile. In other words, they’ve pretty much concluded how far they can push things before they have to spend a dollar. Unfortunately, the people who do that kind of work are treated the same. Management has one view of the job, while technicians have a completely different view.

 

Q.                On the days that you do work at the transmitter, what is your day there like?

 

A.                 Oh I go through all the routine checks to make sure that things are still functioning within the guidelines I’m given. And I do calibrations, check all the remote controls, make sure that nothing is smoking. Run the generators, and other routine tests. It’s really too bad, but the future for people working in maintenance is very limited. Management wants to use fewer and fewer people, and they also want to pay them less and less. It’s a very sad state of affairs.

 

In my 35 years working in the television industry I had never visited the transmitters before. I learned a great deal preparing this report. It’s especially interesting in that, as Dick referred to, it’s a side of the business that will pass sooner rather than later. How many years before there will be no more TV signals over the air and the antenna farms of Newton Highlands become Wal-marts and condos.