Awards

Awards, SBE Chapter 17

Tuesday, October 1, 2024: The Minnesota Broadcasters' Hall of Fame dinner was held in Rochester. MN.

(l-r) Mark Anderson from Bemidji, MN, Chris Grams, WYRQ/KFML/KLTF Radio in Little Falls, Wally and Diane Christensen of KLOH Radio in Pipestone, MN, Paula and Mark Persons, Maynard Meyer from KLQP Radio in Madison, MN, Jim Offerdahl from Fosston, MN along with Tim Russell and his wife.

The induction ceremony for Mark and Paula started with this video.

Then it was time to give speeches. Here is the text of their remarks:
Mark:
We are here today because for 44 years while I was building and repairing radio stations, Paula was in Brainerd talking with customers on the phone and running the business. Interestingly, we never had a Plan B.

We are living in our second architect-designed residence where the electronics shop and office are on the first floor with living quarters above. That made it possible to design and build electronic equipment for the broadcast industry.

Some items were manufactured nearby while hundreds of custom items were hand-built in our shop.

I thoroughly enjoyed being out in the field where I realized things could be done to make stations run better. Then it was back to the shop to design and build something to do just that.

In addition, broadcast equipment for repair came to us from across the nation AND other countries. The money came to Minnesota.

It was not work; it was a lifestyle. Retirement came at age 70. However, this lifetime in broadcasting has not ended. We mentor five radio broadcast engineers. The reward…well…a free lunch now and then.

Paula:
A fun story, Mark was at the WYRQ transmitter site on a farm when a bull  thought Mark was competition for the Heifers. The bull forcefully butted Mark to leave, which he did in a hurry. Next time Mark showed up in town, Chris Grams greeted him with a cape to simulate bull fighting. Farmer later told her the bull could have killed Mark. There is NEVER a dull day in broadcasting!

I used to type articles that Mark wrote for Radio World magazine. That is how I learned he was packing up his gear at a radio station at three in the morning and was suddenly held at gunpoint by a policeman while the station owner was awakened to verify Mark was innocence. How many executives do you know who work in the middle of the night?
Only in radio do you get awakened at 2:00 AM to go downstairs to read a schematic for a transmitter Mark is trying to repair hours away or get called to meet someone at 3:30 AM in northern MN at the halfway point to bring an extra piece of equipment Mark just happened to have in the shop.  That’s why we had our shop where we live.
Our motto was, Take care of the customer and the customer will take care of you.  It was the people like you in this room who made this such a fun ride.  We are very honored and humbled to be receiving this award and thank you very much.
Mark:
We are honored to have worked with some of “America’s Great Radio Stations!”

The plaque reads:
The team of Mark and Paula Persons are from Brainerd where they ran their radio broadcast engineering business for over 44 years. Both are Extra Class amateur radio operators.

Mark started in broadcast engineering as a pre-teen at his family owned WELY Radio in Ely, Minnesota. He did most of the wiring for the family’s KVBR Radio in Brainerd in 1964 at age 17. Mark enlisted in the U.S. Army, taught electronics at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, then spent his 21st year in Vietnam high-tech electronic repair.

Paula was closing secretary at a real estate firm when Mark, now a civilian, was buying a home to set up an electronics shop. They threw her in with the deal! Their marriage in 1978 was a perfect match to be radio broadcast engineering contractors.

They touched most radio stations in the central and northern part of the state. Twelve new radio stations, including six AM directionals, were built from the ground up with Mark’s hands including one in Florida and one in California. Many more were upgraded.

Paula was a full half of the business. While Mark was out in the field building and repairing stations, Paula was in the office telephoning customers and making sure the financial part of the business was being taken care of.

Mark spent time in his shop designing equipment, such as the Programmer 3A Live Assist Controller, for the broadcast industry. He was one of six installers of Motorola AM Stereo in the 1980s. Mark repaired broadcast equipment for local and international customers and is often called the “Radio Doctor.”

Mark continues as a mentor to three radio broadcast engineers and writing for Radio World, with over 200 articles published.

Mark was honored as the 2018 Engineer of the Year by the Society of Broadcast Engineers. Then their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. That was only the tenth such award in the 4500-member association’s 55-year history.
SCUBA diving has occupied much of Paula’s time in retirement with over 1000 dives world-wide.
Mark served as Chaplain at the Brainerd VFW post and continues to write their website, which has received five state awards.

While working, Paula felt it was important to give back to the community. She served on the board of the local humane society, a youth director of their church, a girl scout leader, on the board of the Northland Arboretum, trustee of the VFW Auxiliary, and is past president of Brainerd Rotary. She has also been involved in cleaning over 600 military graves.

Mark has spoken at the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas and at the Wisconsin Broadcasters Clinic, which is now paired with the MN Broadcasters.

Mark and Paula are supporters of Rotary International, the Northland Arboretum, the Pavek Museum, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Habitat for Humanity, and the Salvation Army, among others.

Thursday, July 25, 2024: (l-r) Robert Taylor Barker was congratulated by Chapter 17 President Mike Davison. Taylor is the 2024 SBE Chapter 17 Engineer of the Year.

SBE Chapter 17 is pleased to nominate Taylor Barker, as our Chapter Engineer of the Year because of his long-standing dedication to SBE Chapter 17.

Taylor attend high school in the north Minneapolis suburb of Fridley. He later attended college at University of Minnesota Morris. While he was at the U of M he was active in college radio, eventually serving as the stations General Manager.

In 2017 Taylor served as News Director for Ingstad Family Media. Later, Taylor went on to work for Pioneer PBS, KTTC and currently Nexstar Media Group as Morning Newscast Director.

Since Taylor started to volunteer for our chapter, he has put in many hours of work. From setting up presentations with vendors to getting our meeting locations set to go. He has worked to expand chapter meeting presentations beyond just broadcast vendor presentations. A few examples of meeting presentations include self-driving vehicles, FBI cybercrime investigations, State emergency operation center and coordinators, and many more examples. When he notifies our chapters membership of an upcoming meeting, he will write the message with some “creative flair” instead of a dry message about the location and time.

When Taylor plans out our chapters summer picnic, he will also purchase all of the food and drinks, haul it all to the picnic’s location, unload and set everything up. Same for our annual holiday gathering. He has also contributed to our chapter in other ways. During the pandemic he setup and managed our monthly meetings online. He has been helping transition our chapters email list serve to a Google service in place of our original list serve. At request he even setup and ran a poll of our chapter’s membership on a topic that concerned our members. As our membership lives across the state of Minnesota and into bordering states Taylor has worked to include others that don’t live in the metro area by continuing a remote viewing option and posting recordings on the Chapter 17 YouTube page.

Taylor almost always attends our meetings in person despite living and working a significant distance outside of the Twin Cities Mero area. He is always prepared, he will usually have several questions ready to go for vendor presentations, just in case there aren’t any from the rest of our membership.

Taylor is always willing to help with chapter projects, and he always has a great attitude when working on chapter business.

The Robert W. Flanders SBE Engineer of the Year award is presented to a member who has excelled in his or her career while furthering the mission of the SBE. The 2023 recipient is Joseph Conlon of Inver Grove Heights, MN, currently Secretary of this SBE Chapter.

August 3, 2023: (l-r) Joe Conlon received the SBE Chapter 17 Engineer of the Year award from Chapter Program Chairman Robert Taylor Barker.

December 2, 2022: How many years with Town Square Television?? Joe Conlon, Engineering Manager, CSTE, has been actively engaged as a volunteer, public access producer, board member, and eventually an employee at TST and NDC4, since he was a student at South St. Paul High School, starting around 1988.
Joe joined the nonprofit Board of Directors in 1990 and served on the board about six years before being hired as a staff member in December 1997. In his current role Joe manages the audio/visual engineering needs of our facility, production truck, and four city council chambers, helps to oversee public access services, and spearheads many productions of multi-camera live events with our state-of-the-art production truck.

In the past couple of years Joe’s essential contributions included leading the upgrade of our four city council chambers, studio, edit suites, master control and cable channels to High Definition. He worked tirelessly through the pandemic to assist our cities, schools, churches, nonprofits, members and producers through several rounds of evolving technology, providing virtual and hybrid solutions that kept our community engaged and informed while safe at home.
Joe has also been a leader in our metro wide network of local community media stations who generously share resources and programming with each other. Joe’s passion for the mission of local community media has remained strong over 34 years of service and is still obvious in his work every day.

June 15. 2022: Mike Davison was named the 2022 Chapter 17 Engineer of the Year because of his long-standing dedication to the engineering profession and SBE. Mike grew up south of the Twin Cities Metro Area and graduated from Kenyon Wanamingo High School in 2000. After high school he attended Brown College and received an Associate of Applied Science in Television Production in 2002. During his time at Brown College he interned at Town Square Television, WB23 and 93X. From 2002 to 2006 Mike worked as a Technician for WCCO-TV with responsibilities operating their Air Control, as well as operating the “tape” position for the 5pm, 6pm and 10pm news broadcasts, dubbing commercials from tape into a commercial server for playback on the air, changing backup feed tapes from CBS and CNN, as well as dialing up satellites for news and other feeds. In addition to his job at WCCO-TV worked as an independent contractor from 2002 to 2006 with Town Square Television to run multicamera control rooms for Live city meeting coverage and cover Master Control when regular staff was out sick or on vacation.
In 2006 Mike started fulltime employment with Town Square Television and has continued employment with them to the present. His position started as the primary Master Control Operator, he helped transition the playback facility from analog audio and video to an SDI facility as well as eliminating tape play back to air by setting up a 7-channel playback server. Additionally, he took on not just the playback of programming, but also the scheduling of the channels as other staff left or changed jobs. Mike also worked to set-up web streaming servers to allow viewers access to Town Square Television programming that did not have cable TV, this web streaming system allowed 4 simultaneals Live programs to be sent out.
Over the years Mike took on responsibilities and skills related to the Town Square Television computer network and servers, as part of his advancement in networking skills he obtained the CBNT certification form SBE. Mike has been self-taught in many aspects of computers and website development and maintenance. In 2017 his job at Town Square Television changed to be primarily computer and network related, but still assists with Master Control as needed. As with so many in broadcast IT, the spring of 2020 was a challenge to set-up remote work platforms using equipment on hand, he successfully transitioned a staff of 12 to work from home and continue producing programming and Live coverage of city meetings as well as Live news conferences from the MN Department of Health and MN Govender during lockdown. His remote setups allowed us to also take Live news conferences during protests following the death of George Floyd here in Minnesota.
Mike has been an active member of SBE Chapter 17 since 2008 and is always ready to assists others inside or outside of Town Square Television. Always making it a priority to share with others or take time to train someone new. He works very well with a network of colleagues at similar stations around the Twin Cities and state, creating collaboratives or partnerships, or just helping people out whenever possible. He is always ready and willing to stretch to a new technical challenge, with the attitude of, “Sure, let’s give it a try.” He has been committed to his membership in SBE and continuing the advancement of himself and his fellow employees.

October 18, 2021: The Annual SBE Membership Meeting was held online. Our (Minnesota SBE Chapter 17) was honored for membership growth in Class B. We also took top honors in Chapter Communications IE: this website was deemed best of the 114 SBE chapters world-wide. Chris Tobin from New York was named Engineer of the Year posthumously. He died of a heart attack last winter. Megan Clappe became an SBE Fellow. Congratulations!

June 2021: Jon Blomstrand, (member 11522, CPBE) was SBE Chapter 17 Engineer of the 2021 Year, in recognition of his long-standing dedication of more than 40 years to the engineering profession and a member of SBE since 1988.

Jon Blomstrand is a broadcast engineer with Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). Prior to joining MPR, he held the Director of Engineering positions for Hubbard Broadcasting, CBS/Viacom, as well as broadcast engineer for ABC/Walt Disney Companies.

While at Hubbard Broadcasting, Jon applied all his knowledge and experience to the successful completion of rebuilding the Franklin antenna. There are presently very few operating Franklin antennas in the world. Due to the uniqueness of this antenna, the challenge of understanding, redesigning, and rebuilding it is an enlightening education few will ever experience. Ron Rackley designed the system and Jon has mentioned in conversations that it was a genuine pleasure to work with him.

Jon started his broadcast career in high school as a DJ at a local FM station in Nebraska. He quickly realized that was not his calling. He knew broadcasting was where he wanted to be and found his passion and talents were suited to broadcast engineering.

In 2005 Jon, along with Steve Brown, retired chief engineer from WLTE, accomplished the reformation of SBE Chapter 17. The chapter had been dormant for many years. Jon is actively involved and takes pride in being a Chapter 17 officer from 2005 to present, where he has held the positions of program chairman, coordinator, co-chairman, chairman, and is currently treasurer and grill master at the annual picnic. SBE and Jon’s missions align as they work to further educate present engineers while bringing in new talent.

Jon and his son, Nicolas Blomstrand, corporate lead RF engineer for iHeart Radio, have successfully launched Commsulting LLC., working with broadcast stations in the upper Midwest.

Jon’s family is his pride and joy. He is proud of all his children, their spouses, and thoroughly enjoys teaching his grandchildren all the fun and noisy experiments in engineering and science, as he encourages them to go home and
repeat it for their parents. What goes around comes around.

September 23, 2020: The Society of Broadcast Engineers presented its Membership Meeting & Awards Presentation (MMAP) webcast The program, held online after the in-person events had to be cancelled because of COVID-19, combined the SBE's annual Membership Meeting and Awards Banquet presentations into one online event.

In addition to the previously announced awards, including the Robert W. Flanders SBE Engineer of the Year award to RJ Russell, CPBE, of Middletown, DE, and the 2020 James C. Wulliman SBE Educator of the Year awards to Fred Baumgartner, CPBE, CBNT, of Elizabeth, CO, and Roland Robinson, CBTE, CBNT, CTO, of Tacoma, WA, the event also recognized other individual and chapter efforts, as well as the two newest SBE Fellows, Ralph Beaver, CBT, and Jim Leifer, CPBE.

Mark Persons

The MMAP also added a special surprise event. The SBE John H. Battison Award for Lifetime Achievement recognizes and pays tribute to individuals for their dedication, lifelong achievement and outstanding contribution to broadcast engineering. Nominees are SBE members in good standing and have been active for 40 years or more in the broadcast engineering industry or a closely allied field that benefits broadcast engineering. Nominations can be made by any member of the SBE and will include the endorsement of three other SBE members. There is no more than one recipient per calendar year. The recipient for 2020 is Mark Persons, CPBE, AMD, CBNT.
Mark followed in the footstep of his father, who was also a radio broadcast engineer. Mark started turning transmitter knobs more than 60 years ago.

While reaching the rank of sergeant in the United States Army from 1967 to 1969, Mark was in charge of an avionics repair shop for the OV-1 Mohawk high-tech surveillance aircraft in Vietnam. After his military service, he spent the next ten years with KVBR radio in Brainerd, MN, where he became chief engineer. In 1977, he opened his own radio engineering consulting business, which he operated for the next 40 years. He married his wife Paula in 1978, and she became instrumental in running the business side of the business out of their home.

Mark has been a respected engineer in Minnesota and the upper Midwest his entire career. He built 12 commercial AM and FM radio stations, and rebuilt, upgraded, maintained and repaired countless other radio stations for clients. He has endeavored to share his knowledge and experience with others in the field. He has written more than 140 articles that have appeared in industry magazines and made more than 25 speeches and presentations at industry conventions, conferences and meetings.

Mark joined the SBE in 1981, and is now a life member. He holds three life certifications from the SBE. Outside of his broadcasting career, Mark is a member of the American Legion, The VFW and Disabled American Veterans. He enjoys amateur radio as WØMH, and photography.
Retired several years ago, he and Paula are mentoring younger broadcast engineers through the SBE Mentor Program. Mentoring is his way of giving back to the industry that kept him employed for more than 50 years.

On receiving the honor during the webcast, Mark said, "This really was a lifetime experience for me. I never had a plan B. I was always going to be a broadcast engineer, and that's exactly how it came out. I want to continue to contribute to the Society of Broadcast Engineers. Thank you."

For perspective, the Society of Broadcast Engineers is an organization of more than 4500 members in 114 chapters world-wide. This is only the 10th time they presented the award in their 56 year history.

hal_schardin_sbe_chapter_engineer_of_the_year_nomination_2020.pdf
File Size:	135 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

August 8, 2020: The late Hal Schardin was nominated for and posthumously received the Chapter 17 Engineer Of The Year Award. This picture is with his widow, Patty, and his sons.

June, 2020: SBE Chapter 17 member Harold "Hal" James Schardin died at the age of 68. Hal had a lifetime interest in electricity. He attended Brown Institute while working at Radio Shack. Over the years, he worked at KANO, WCCO and KSTP, just to name a few.

October 3, 2018: Congratulations to Mark Persons, CPBE, AMD, CBNT. Mark was nominated, by this chapter, and was then selected as the 2018 Engineer of the Year by the SBE. Mark and his wife Paula accepted the award in a ceremony at Boston, MA.

sbe_chapter_engineer_of_the_year_nomination_2018.docx
File Size:	24 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

Mark was working with his hands from the time he was crawling as a baby. He is forever building and working with electronics. We are not talking about plug-and-Play. Mark designed nine pieces of electronic equipment that were manufactured by Zercom, now Nortech in Merrifield, MN. He also designed literally hundreds of one-of-a-kind electronic circuits used in radio broadcast stations across the country. Some found their way abroad. He designed and built it all with great determination for the broadcast industry.
Mark loves going to radio stations to fix what is broken or install new circuits to make broadcasting the best that it can be. One sign on the back of his service truck reads "Radio Doctor." Another reads "So Many Transmitters, So Little Time." He really is dedicated to the industry that he grew up in. How many people do you know who have done the same thing their entire life?
Mark didn’t happen into broadcasting. He was born into it. His father Charles B. Persons started in radio engineering in the 1920's. Mark knew in high school that he wanted to work in electronics and specifically in radio broadcasting as an engineer. While a teenager, he helped build a station. The only time he did not spend in broadcasting was during his stint in the U. S. Army. He taught electronics at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, and spent a year in Vietnam (1968 to 1969) as Sergeant in Charge of an avionics repair shop keeping the hi-tech OV-1 Mohawk surveillance aircraft in the air.
Back in the states, Mark worked in his family-owned radio station until 1979 when he went on to be a contract engineer for many stations. This was a new field at the time. In total, he has built 12 new commercial radio stations, mostly in the Midwest. That included building phasors at four AM directional stations. Countless others were rebuilt or upgraded along the way. Mark installed AM Stereo at 40 radio stations back in the 1980's.
Mark has written 150 engineering articles for national publications, mostly in Radio World. He has given twelve speeches before regional radio conventions, three at NAB conventions, and one at a national SBE convention.
Mark is a Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer with the SBE (Society of Broadcast Engineers.) AM Directional and Computer Networking were added to his certifications. He served as Minnesota Frequency Coordinator for the SBE for about six years. Mark was a mentor to three radio broadcast engineers even before the SBE started a program to do that. He added one at that time.
Mark is a constant inspiration to others and spends time almost every day helping other radio broadcast engineers solve transmitter problems. Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) was something he took up in 1963. His amateur call sign is W0MH. Mark is no stranger to long hours and hard work. He is dedicated to getting things done for his clients. His website is: http://www.mwpersons.com
Mark Persons is a life member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers, the American Radio Relay League, The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans. He lives in Brainerd, MN, with his wife Paula.

Joe Conlon and Steve Brown

Steve Brown, on the right, became SBE Engineer of the Year in 2017. Congratulations!

sbe_chapter_engineer_of_the_year_nomination_2017.docx
File Size:	16 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

Mike Hendrickson

Congratulations to Mike Hendrickson, CPBE, CBNT. Mike received the SBE Engineer of the Year award in 2016.

sbe_chapter_engineer_of_the_year_nomination_2016.docx
File Size:	15 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

2015 Engineer of the Year nominee Mark Durenberger, CPBE

sbe_chapter_engineer_of_the_year_nomination_2015.docx
File Size:	15 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

2014 Engineer of the Year nominee George Werl, Jr. CPBE

sbe_chapter_engineer_of_the_year_nomination_2014.docx
File Size:	15 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

2013 Engineer of the Year nominee Don Heppelmann

sbe_chapter_engineer_of_the_year_nomination_2013.docx
File Size:	14 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File