2025 Stories

SBE Chapter 17 Meetings and Stories in 2025

SBE Chapter 17 Zoom meeting recordings appear at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzmFge7phAyiY2FCsIiFfPg

June 24, 2025: This SBE meeting was attended via Zoom and in-person at was at State Services for The Blind, 2200 University Avenue West. William Irvin, Managing Director and Vice President of Radio Automation for WideOrbit, presented over Zoom. He explained the ins and outs of their radio automation system, which is widget based and links to the Wide-Orbit Traffic system.

SBE 17 engineers had a pizza lunch at CCX just before the presentation.

On May 21 at Noon, we heard from Dan Merwin, CBNE. [email protected] 720-526-7105.
He was a recent guest on This Week In Radio Tech, and presented to one of our counterparts on SD-WAN (software defined Wide Area Network), and how that matters to the busines. https://thisweekinradiotech.com/twirt-home/2025/3/7/twirt-738-sd-wan-for-broadcasters-with-dan-merwin-reggie-jef.html

If you’re not familiar with SD-WAN, it has become the predominant architectural model for site-to-site and site-to-cloud networking. iHeart, among others in the industry, are replacing their RF STL’s with SD-WAN. Our hosts was CCX Media in Brooklyn Park.

Then it was time for a tour of CCX Media in Brooklyn Park.

April 25, 2025, We met at Quad Cities Community Television. Our speaker was Andrew Scaglione from Radio Cloud. He is account director, responsible for global business development with a focus on the US market. Andrew has been in the industry for a decade-plus and is based in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to Radio Cloud, Andrew worked for G Networks/Sun Broadcast Group/Envision Networks in Cleveland, and was a TV and radio sports reporter/anchor in Fayetteville, Arkansas for 3.5 years in the mid 2010s. AI and cloud technology are rapidly evolving as we progress through 2025. As an industry, it’s an important topic to keep up to date on and ultimately adapt. Andrew Scaglione explained what’s already possible to achieve in broadcasting using AI and the cloud. Stations pay $700 to $800 per month for the service. The talk included global case studies. This meeting connected remote viewers over Microsoft Teams.

April 25, 2025: Well known Twin Cities radio personality Tom Ambrose passed way at the age of 79. His career included employment at WCCO TV, KQRS, WWTC, WCCO FM, KUOM and as an executive at Minnesota News Network.

Funeral notice

MPR News Story

April 2025 SBE Signal. George Werl is the Certification Chair in this chapter.

March 6, 2025: Eric Levy, Chief Revenue Officer for WMVision. They specialize in weather and traffic cameras. We heard from him over lunch at the IDS Center, 80 South 8th Street.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBwc5J0uRTw
Once Mr. Levy is done, we met President Douglas Weaver of Broadcast Services Inc. He took us on a long-awaited tour of the transmitter facilities upstairs at the IDS.

February 17, 2025: Mike Downs, the new National Director of SBE, was interviewed about his first few days at SBE. He spent 20 years in a similar position at Kiwanis International.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=137KqhheoWM

February 6, 2025: We me at Minnesota Public Radio in Saint Paul, complete with a luncheon.

Chapter 17 Chairman Mike Davison said our chapter lost some members because they moved over to SBE Chapter 63 in Fargo. This is a new chapter and those members live closer to Fargo than the Twin Cities.

Mike said that our members should work at bringing in new members to Chapter 17.

Our campaign runs March 1st thru May 31st (hopefully the same as the National SBE Membership Drive)
If you are a current member, and you manage to sign up a new one for our Chapter, you will receive a $50.00 check towards your next membership renewal. If you sign up a second member, you can receive an additional $50.00 rebate. (No additional benefits will be extended to a current member who signs up three or more people.)
Any new member signed up during our campaign would receive a one-off $55.00 discount towards their first bill.
We are offering this to a maximum of 20 new people, or at a total cost to the Chapter of $1,700.00, whichever comes last.
Assuming we hit our goal, per our calculations, the Chapter would maintain a little under $1,700.00 in its bank account afterwards.

Thanks to Bill Dahlstrom and MPR for a meeting location.

Mike Davison, President of SBE Chapter 17

Mike Pappas from Orban gave an excellent talk about why broadcast audio is often bad sounding. Many times, he said, tracing wiring in the audio chain revealed an Aphex Compellor, which no one on staff knew existed in the station. Removing most extra devices is the best choice for clean audio. Analog to digital and digital to analog converters can cause unwanted problems too. Pappas told the group to do an audit of their audio chains. If they find a box that is old enough to drink (21 or more years old), then it is probably time to replace or eliminate it.

Thanks to Mike Davison for photos of the studio tour at MPR. It is an awesome place. Click on images for a larger view.

January 14, 2025: Joe H. Floyd, 88 of Harrisburg, SD passed away. Floyd cut his broadcasting teeth as a teenager, working at KELOLAND TV, making sure news stories made it on-air, back in the days when everything was shot on film. He saw television as a stage show in your living room. Joe had a different view of what TV was all about. Instead of playing to an audience, it was actually about having the audience come into the stage. The funeral was January 19, 2025 in Sioux Falls.

https://www.millerfh.com/obituary/joseph-floyd

January 17, 2025: The presenter was Jason Weintraub and Vincent Deur of Sony <https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/985618-REG/sony_elcmvs01_live_production_control.html>, talking about their automation solutions. This happened at Town Square Television in Inver Grove Heights. More attended in person that is shown in the photo and even more attended online.