Helpful hint: Print this notice
and attach to your bulletin board or refrigerator
Howard Kirsch, ParkerVision, Inc.
Refreshments and Social Hour: 6:30-7:30 PM
Presentation: 7:30 PM
Most US broadcasters produce only one kind of local programming: news. With costs rising and profits shrinking, 'call-letter' stations have few options: they can sell more advertising; they can cut jobs; and they can negotiate better deals with producers and equipment vendors to reduce their expenditures. Broadcasters can also do the one thing that's within the purview of engineers: buy easier-to-use, and more cleverly designed equipment that can be operated by fewer people with no degradation of program look and feel.
With their Digital Studio News Automation System ('PVTV'), ParkerVision has created an operating environment that allows news producers to generate programming more quickly and less expensively than with traditional production systems, while requiring fewer equipment operators than ever before. Seen another way, stations can increase the production of news programming without increasing costs.
The PVTV 'live' broadcast production system integrates video, audio, machine control, robotic cameras, teleprompters, switchers, and other gear into an intelligent, single-operator automated station. Howard Kirsch, Western Regional Manager for ParkerVision, who is a former NBC broadcast engineer and is currently a SMPTE-SF manager, will give an overview of the system and how it is being used to create efficient, creative and cost-effective newscasts in stations as close to the Bay Area as Santa Rosa’s KFTY.
Since 1998, more than 20 television stations have chosen PVTV news for their local newscasts. The ABC Television Network in New York is using PVTV for cut-ins and breaking news, while the McGraw-Hill Broadcasting Group just announced an agreement to purchase PVTV Studio 24+ systems for their stations in Denver, Indianapolis, San Diego, and Bakersfield. All three news-producing network affiliates in Bakersfield use PVTV systems.
Some argue that over-the-air broadcasting is a dinosaur, a doomed economic model that will bankrupt all but the most resourceful owners. Over the past few years there has been a steady consolidation of stations into larger groups. Companies such as Granite, Benedek, Ackerley, Fisher, and Sinclair, among others, have experienced declining profits, which have led to cutbacks in personnel and reduced salaries. Although part of ParkerVision’s success has been in its ability to lower stations' operating overhead, is lower-cost technology enough to ensure the survival of local broadcast television?
After Howard’s short presentation, please join us for an open, freewheeling discussion about the future of terrestrial television. You'll also have a chance to look at the KQED broadcast facility.
Peter Hammar
Secretary
San Francisco Section
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
Click on the map to browse and get detailed directions from your location