Broadcast technicians are essential to the operation of television and
radio stations. They are also involved in the production of audio and video
streaming broadcasts for the Internet.
Broadcast technicians go by many different titles. Another common title
is broadcast engineer.
"Everything, and every day, is extremely different from the last," says
Jessica Rye. She's a broadcast engineer at a Kansas TV station. "There are
so many aspects to keeping a signal on the air and I get to do something different
every day."
The work of broadcast technicians falls into two basic categories within
the engineering department -- operations and maintenance.
Operations technicians set up and monitor equipment that regulates the
quality of sound and pictures. They also operate controls during the actual
production of a show.
Maintenance technicians keep the equipment running -- even remote transmitting
towers. The equipment is highly sophisticated and you never know when something
will break down.
"The more challenging aspect would be trying to figure out how to fix certain
things, and figuring out what happened to cause the problem," says Rye. "You
usually need to have some body strength for helping load or unload and install
or uninstall equipment."
Information technology (IT) is changing the field of broadcasting.
"IT departments and broadcast departments are becoming one, which makes
sense as we move to an increasingly IT-based world," says Peter Gillespie.
He's the education chair for a broadcast engineering association. "This is
an interesting evolution because many years ago, operations and engineering
departments became one."
At smaller stations, technicians may have to cover many different jobs.
At larger networks, the job might be very specific, such as monitoring satellites.
Either way, computer expertise is essential.
Digital technology now dominates the industry. The work of broadcast technicians
has evolved.
"Definitely the industry has dramatically changed from a hardware-based
component industry to an IT and software workflow-based industry," says Gillespie.
"A technician used to have to fix components," Gillespie says. "Now they
just replace them when they fail. Technicians are also now dealing with software
and software workflows -- setting up and maintaining software in a complex
yet coordinated system."
Electronic equipment must be protected from extremes of temperature, which
means working conditions are generally comfortable. Manual dexterity and mechanical
aptitude are important skills.
"You have to be on time and you have to be diligent in what you're doing,"
says Richard Morris. He's a broadcast technician and film producer with more
than 30 years of industry experience.
"You have to be insightful because you have to continuously learn and
progress," says Morris. "If you don't keep learning, if you don't have a willingness
to take on more responsibility and learn new technologies, then you're going
to fall by the wayside."
The workweek usually ranges from 40 to 50 hours. Some weeks may be more
demanding than others.
"You need to be on-call for any situation where the on-air signal may
have an issue that needs to be resolved quickly," says Rye. "In my experience,
this hasn't been something that truly interferes with my home life. This is
mostly a 9-to-5 job."
"Depending on what job you have, the hours can be long and demanding,"
says Gillespie. "You simply can't leave in the middle of a task or project!
Weekends, night work, overtime. One of my project managers put in over 200
hours of overtime in a six-week period on one of the projects we sent him
on."