The Infinite Dial

Title: Director of Engineering, WABC / WPLJ Citadel Broadcasting New York City

Who is Alex? "I started out in radio when I was a junior in high school in Sacramento, CA. My high school had a "radio and TV" program that had everything except a license and a transmitter, but we did have a few studios and some loudspeakers. I would call around to radio stations to beg for promo CDs and got invited to KFBK/KGBY, where they let me hang out in the studio and pull CDs and carts one night a week. One night I met the Chief Engineer of the stations as he was there moving cars around so they could repave the parking lot. He ended up hiring me part-time and had me come in after school to help build studios and do remotes.

I moved to Santa Barbara, CA for college and sent out exactly one resume to the alternative rock station I liked and was again hired as a part-time assistant engineer. We were purchased by a company owning stations in the Oxnard-Ventura market and the Chief Engineer and I ended up moving five stations into two new facilities in two markets. I eventually badgered the former Chief Engineer of these stations into hiring me at the Y-107 trimulcast in Los Angeles as the Assistant Chief Engineer. In a few years I was promoted to Chief Engineer of what was then Viva 107.1, owned by Big City Radio. When that company dissolved I looked around for a few options and joined Clear Channel New York as Chief Engineer of 103.5 WKTU in 2003. I ended up rebuilding most of the WKTU studio facility and helped get the Whoopi Goldberg show on the air. In January 2007 I accepted the position of Director of Engineering of WABC and WPLJ. One of my goals in radio was to take care of one of the big, legendary AM stations, and I think WABC counts. Starting out in the business I used to hear stories about Pirate Radio and Scott Shannon and now I'm working at WPLJ. It's been an amazing experience and a challenge every day."

What would your dream job be? "I want to expand upon what I'm doing now to oversee more stations either on a regional or at a corporate level. I would like the opportunity to work with other engineers to elevate the technical practice in broadcasting. The number of services we now maintain and the complexity of the systems we maintain has increased dramatically in the last few years. It used to be one station, one transmitter. Now it's the main analog service, the main HD service, two HD multicasts, streams for some or all of those, artist/title data sent three different ways, and a host of datacasting services, multiplied by several stations in a cluster. All of that "stuff" needs skilled technical talent to install, maintain, and monitor it. Radio needs to find and develop that talent, then give them the resources they need and a reason to be passionate about their work. I'd like the chance to do exactly that on a larger scale."

Who has been your greatest influence? "Broadway Bill Lee. Watch him do 20 minutes of great radio and you'll realize why we do any of this."

What is the one format that you can't believe nobody has done? "I would say an eclectic rock/new music format. We need to accept that there is a group of people that has tastes that are not accounted for in mainstream programming and they're not listening to your competition, they're just not listening to the radio. They find new music on MySpace or go to indie rock shows and just listen to their iPod. This is happening with a younger generation now and we need to bring them back into the fold somehow. We need to find programmers who understand how to go out on a limb musically without sounding forced or being too cool for the room and create a channel that makes people go "hmm, what's that?" every now and then."

How could radio do a better job of attracting younger listeners? "Stay in closer touch with youth culture. I've been to plenty of rock shows where an entire theater is full of young people who know every song but maybe one station is going to play one track from the artist, if that. Some of these bands become huge, some don't. Radio people need to be musically adventurous themselves and also have the ability to realize what's going to have mass appeal and what isn't."

How will radio remain relevant in a digital world? "It's about content. We've been creating content forever but we only had one distribution channel. Now it's a matter of multiplying our efforts so we're "always on" with websites that are worth going to on a regular basis, mobile content, podcasts, multiple channels, streams, and whatever else comes next, all while not neglecting the regular services that our listeners expect every time they hit the button. The important thing is to put the right amount of effort into all of it, and that takes resources that may not be there yet."