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Podcast Recalls N.Y. Engineering Response After Sept. 11

Listen to the audio of a special AES session from 2003

Brett Moss is gear & technology editor.

Around this time each year, when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are recalled, broadcast engineers in New York think back with particular anguish, remembering the many people who died, including six of their engineering colleagues.

There also is pride in how the engineering community in New York responded after the blow.

Broadcasters, especially TV stations, had to scramble to get back on the air or return their service to full coverage. A common solution was to broadcast from the Empire State Building, where many had been based before moving to the WTC. Facilities including the Alpine Tower in New Jersey and Manhattan’s 4 Times Square also were called into play. With a stunning amount of cooperation and extraordinary effort by broadcasters, city authorities and antenna and tower workers, broadcasting in New York returned to something like normal in a short amount of time.

Nearly two years later, the 115th AES Convention featured a session, “Rebuilding of New York Broadcasting,” examining the events from 9/11 through getting broadcasters back up onto the air and exploring ways to make the broadcast systems of the city safer and more secure.

Now, seven years farther on, audio of that two-hour session is available online at the AES website for anyone to hear and remember.

Chief session organizer and long-time AES session organizer David Bialik called it “easily one of the sessions I am most proud of.” Bialik was aided in putting the session together by Howard Price of ABC, Herb Squire of DSI RF Systems and Mark Kordash of WPLJ(FM).

The panel included Joe Giardina of DSI RF Systems, John Lyons of property owner the Durst Organization, Kevin Plumb of WABC and WPLJ, Steve Shultis of WNYC Radio and Tom Silliman of tower builder and antenna installer ERI Inc.

You can hear the session here.

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