The Essay "Broadcast Engineering" is about all aspects of the broadcast engineer occupation, including work setting, education required, and pay scale.

Essay by made4sleep December 2003

download word file, 4 pages 3.0

Admit it, television is entertaining, if it was not, then why would ninety-eight percent of all American households own a television set? And of these households, the "telly" is turned on for an average of seven hours a week! You are most likely a watcher of the television and may wonder what goes on behind the scenes, or who keeps the show running. The people who keep television running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week are called broadcast engineers.

The jobs that broadcast engineers do vary greatly. There are people that operate cameras, people that sit in a dark room and watch television monitors, and even people that supervise the engineers. But they all have one thing in common; they are all called broadcast engineers, or technicians. Most jobs that broadcast engineers do fall into three categories. These are control technicians, maintenance technicians, and transmission technicians. Control technicians are the people that switch camera angles during the show, call for commercial breaks, and do other on-air tasks.

Control technicians may also keep transmission logs for the studio they work for. Transmission technicians do not actually work at the studio where the show is produced, but in relay stations that send out the program to the viewers. They may perform tasks such as reading gauges, monitors, and meters to control the quality of the image being sent to your home. Maintenance technicians; the name speaks for itself. When electronics that are used by control, or transmission technicians break down, maintenance technicians are there to fix them.

Maintenance technicians may work at many stations, or just be employed by one. Like I said, the work done by broadcast technicians differs significantly.

Skills needed to become a broadcast engineer are much different than those of other jobs. Math is essential. Broadcast...