Congratulations to Paul Shulins, co-owner of Over The Air RF Consulting. He is the recipient of the 2025 NAB Radio Engineering Achievement Award, which was presented at the NAB Show on April 8. Paul joins us on TWiRT, along with Chris Tarr, to talk about recognizing broadcast engineers and their contributions and recognition in the broadcast industry. We’ll also look at some moments and technical achievements in Paul’s career, plus discuss engineers’ role in the future of radio broadcasting.

The NAB Show 2025, held from April 5-9 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, showcased a wide array of cutting-edge technical exhibits focused on media, entertainment, and technology innovations. There’s no way that TWiRT could bring you a wide look at the whole show, but we did manage to interview ten broadcast industry insiders in just over an hour, and we present them to you on this episode! From England to Australia, from the Netherlands to Florida, and from Minnetonka to Los Angeles, we’re letting you in on the technical and industry conversations that exemplify our experiences at NAB. Special thanks to Broadcast Bionics for providing a set for TWiRT production, and the bandwidth to send you our show!

Public radio has an audience size of around 30 million weekly radio listeners with a broader reach exceeding 57 million when including digital platforms. Public Radio engineers play a critical role in building, upgrading, and maintaining the needed facilities and infrastructure. Broadcasters go to the NAB show in Las Vegas to see and hear what’s […]

Never miss a chance to talk with John Bisset, author of the Workbench column in Radio World magazine. John joins us along with Chris Tarr to reveal useful tricks and techniques that any broadcast engineer will find helpful. See this episode’s Show Notes (on this show’s listing on YouTube and at ThisWeekInRadioTech.com). From an easy way to print cable labels, to saving your knees, to marking combo locks with the little-known resistor color code, John brings us some fun and useful ideas for living a better engineering life.

Kathy Stieler and Clark Lindstrom, two prominent leaders in the communication tower industry, are discuss best practices and emerging trends in safety within the broadcast tower sector. Kathy, affiliated with NATE (National Association of Tower Erectors), emphasizes the importance of standardized training and certification programs to ensure worker competency and safety compliance. Clark, who oversees safety initiatives at American Tower, highlights the role of technology in identifying hazards and reducing on-site risks. Both guests promote a proactive safety culture, where regular audits, clear communication, and employee empowerment are prioritized. The conversation underscores the industry’s ongoing commitment to evolving safety standards amid increasing demand for reliable broadcast infrastructure.

Ya gotta love Dustin Tatro’s journey into and through radio broadcasting. Voicing PSAs at 4 years old got Dustin an early start. Then working as a DJ, along with musical interests, honed his technical and operational skills. Now as a General Manager and Ops Manager, Dustin has demonstrably learned the engineering side of radio broadcasting. Indeed, his SBE certification, CBRE, attests to that. Dustin joins Chris Tarr and Kirk Harnack to discuss AoIP, audio processing, work working nicely, even with competing radio stations. Indeed, he joins us from the KORQ-FM transmitter site.

SD-WAN - Software-Defined Wide-Area Network - is a technology implementation designed to bring better reliability and performance to IP connections over distance. Whether across town, to remote offices, or to remote transmitter sites, SD-WAN technologies are gaining interest among broadcast engineers and IT staff. It turns out there are a lot of features - optional but useful features - that can be deployed alongside basic WAN management and monitoring. Dan Merwin and Reggie Jeffery work in broadcast and other industries to offer appropriate technologies and capabilities, improving our critical IP connections.

Megan Amoss is the assistant chief engineer for Baltimore Public Media, which includes FM stations WTMD, WYPR, WYPF, and WYPO. Starting in a Traffic Coordinator role, she progressed to taking on engineering responsibilities, eventually becoming a key figure in the technical operations of Baltimore Public Media. Megan has been instrumental in the integration of WTMD and WYPR, where she is involved in the conversion of WYPR's studios to an Axia AoIP system. Megan joins Chris Tarr and Kirk Harnack, discussing engineering challenges with some focus on metadata, which has become critical for today’s broadcasters.

John Kean, Dave Hershberger, and Tom King recently set out to take measurements of RF noise levels on various roadway types from open interstate highways to city streets, to determine how the noise would affect AM broadcast reception. These environments reflect the current habits of AM radio listening, which is primarily in vehicles. In addition to RF noise level, RF signal levels were measured for three AM stations operating on frequencies in the low, middle and high ends of the AM broadcast band. These measurements provide a better understanding of how AM radio reception is affected by RF signal strength and noise in a range of roadway environments from rural to dense urban environments. On this episode of TWiRT, John Kean and Dave Hershberger join us to describe the testing methodology and the results and conclusions we can infer from them.

Radio automation systems seem daunting at first glance. Those new to their programming and operation are often surprised by the number of pre-requisites and source material needed to put a radio format together, especially when the automation system is thought to do these things for you. Not to worry, Chris Tarr is here to clear up confusion and doubt, and help broadcasters consider some of the key aspects of implementing a radio automation playout system.