2025 Stories

SBE Chapter 17 Meetings and Stories in 2025

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

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.

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.