On the heels of the news that Monitoring Times will close this year, comes the news of the closure of another radio publication. Industry magazine Broadcast Engineering announced on Friday that it will end publication this Thursday, October 31.
Though probably not well known outside of the world of radio engineers and the people who love them, Broadcast Engineering has been a source of news and information for broadcasters for 54 years. It isn’t clear if the closure of this magazine is due to challenges in the overall publishing industry, or is more of an indicator of the fortunes of broadcasting, and the broadcast engineering trade more specifically.
My experience in radio during the last decade, especially when working outside of a major metropolitan area, shows that experienced broadcast engineers are increasingly hard to find. A couple of in demand engineers I knew in Central Illinois had contracts with multiple stations that could take them all over a radius of several hundred miles for work. Yet, with the number of FM stations continuing to grow, and hundreds of new LPFM stations coming on line in the next few years, more broadcast engineers are needed, not fewer.
While there are still trade publications that serve broadcast engineers, it is always sad to lose another voice and the diversity of coverage and information it provided.
