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  March 5, 2012
Radio Tech Check

Paul Brenner and Glenn Reitmeier to Receive 2012 NAB Engineering Achievement Awards

NAB presents its Radio and Television Engineering Achievement Awards each year at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. The awards, first established in 1959, are given to individuals for their significant contributions, which have advanced the state of the art of broadcast engineering. This year's winners, Paul Brenner (Radio) and Glenn Reitmeier (Television) will be honored at the Technology Luncheon on Wednesday, April 18, 2012.

Radio Engineering Achievement Award Winner
Paul Brenner

Paul Brenner is senior vice president and chief technology officer for Emmis Communications. His work at Emmis focuses on technology business development, industry partnerships, broadcast engineering strategy and the development of new broadcasting and Internet content distribution systems. Brenner works both within the industry and with pure-play IT development companies. His perspective gained from interaction with automakers, Internet software companies and portable device makers led him to product developments such as live traffic information through the Broadcaster Traffic Consortium and TagStation song tagging for radio broadcasters developed in partnership with Broadcast Electronics.

Brenner currently serves as president of the Broadcaster Traffic Consortium, LLC a partnership of 16 radio companies throughout the U.S. and Canada formed to distribute data via FM-RDS and HD Radio. He also served on the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) working group for EAS CAP as well as NAB's Digital Radio Committee.

Brenner joined Emmis from IT consulting firm DataShare Corporation in 1998. He holds a Masters degree in Information Systems as well as degrees in E-Business and Electronics Engineering Technologies. HD chip developer SiPort also utilizes Paul's industry expertise as a member of their Board of Advisors.

Television Engineering Achievement Award Winner
Glenn Reitmeier

Glen Reitmeier is Senior Vice President, Technology Strategy & Policy for NBC Universal. He leads NBC Universal's technical efforts on industry standards, government policy, commercial agreements, anti-piracy operations and advanced engineering.

Since joining NBC in 2002, he has been involved in the creation of NBC's first high-definition cable channel, Universal-HD, launched DTV multicast programming and mobile broadcasting, and the distribution of NBC-U content to new digital consumer devices, including PCs, game consoles, and personal devices. Reitmeier served as Chairman of the Advanced Television Systems Committee from 2006-2009, which under his leadership developed the ATSC Mobile DTV standard. He is also a Board member of the North American Broadcasters Association and a contributor to the Open Mobile Video Coalition's Technical Advisory Group, the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, and the Open Authentication Technology Committee.

Prior to joining NBC Universal, Reitmeier spent 25 years in digital video research and development at Sarnoff Laboratories. He is widely recognized as a pioneering visionary, creator, and architect of digital television. Early in his career, he was instrumental in establishing the ITU 601 component digital video standard, which is currently in worldwide use as the backbone of modern television broadcasting and production facilities. During the competitive phase of HDTV standardization, Reitmeier lead the Sarnoff-Thomson-Philips-NBC development of Advanced Digital HDTV, which pioneered the use of MPEG compression, packetized transport, and multiple video formats. He was a key member of the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance, taking a leadership role in its formation and in all of its technical decisions, communications with government and industry, and interoperability efforts that lead to establishing the ATSC Digital Television Standard. He holds over 50 patents in digital video technology and is a graduate of Villanova University.

Reitmeier is a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and is a recipient of SMPTE's Progress Medal and the Leitch Gold Medal. He is also an inaugural member of the Consumer Electronics Association Academy of Digital Television Pioneers. He is recognized in the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2010 Mr. Reitmeier received a Broadcasting & Cable Technical Leadership Award.

CNET's Brian Cooley to Keynote NAB Show Technology Luncheon

CNET's Editor at Large Brian Cooley will deliver a keynote address called "Top Ten Technology Countdown" at the NAB Show Technology luncheon on Wednesday, April 18 from 12:30 - 1:45 p.m.in Las Vegas, Nev.

The NAB Technology Luncheon, sponsored by LG, will also feature the presentation of the Technology Innovation Awards, created in 2009, to honor organizations that bring advanced technology exhibits and demonstrations of significant merit that have not yet been commercialized to the NAB Show. The NAB Best Paper Award, established in 2010, will also be presented to the author(s) of a paper of exceptional merit published in the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference Proceedings.

Tickets for the Technology Luncheon are available with conference registration packages or can be individually ordered online.

Additional details and registration information for the 66th NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference is available online. For 2012, the NAB Show offers registration packages that give you access to more - more sessions, more cross-conference access, more year-round learning opportunities, more networking - all for one great price. Check out the conference packages including a SMART Pass and Conference Flex Pass.

REMINDER: Daylight Savings Time is nigh!

All broadcasters are required by FCC §73.682(d) to have the correct data in their STT which currently includes a notice of the change to daylight savings time (unless your station is in Hawaii, Arizona, Midway Islands, or Wake Island).

For most stations, the DS_day_of_month in the System Time Table (STT) must have the value "11" and the DS hour must have the local hour on which you will switch. The DS_status must be "0" until March 11, 2012. After the time change it must switch to "1."

The seconds count sent in the STT is decoupled from daylight savings time and is separately required to be accurate within one second at all receivers. Compensation for delay and jitter through the emission system (as compared to the source clock) is the responsibility of the broadcaster.

More information can be found in A/65 Annex A. Note that both the time and the daylight savings indication values can impact receiver operation if incorrect.







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