Milford K. Smith Jr. of Greater Media will receive the 2010 Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award from the editors of Radio World, the news source for radio managers and engineers. The announcement was made by U.S. Editor in Chief Paul J. McLane.
Recipients of the award represent the highest ideals of the U.S. radio broadcast engineering profession and reflect those ideals through contributions to the industry.
Smith is vice president of radio engineering for Greater Media, the parent company of 23 AM and FM radio stations in Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, Philadelphia and New Jersey as well as a group of weekly newspapers and several telecommunications towers.
“Smitty sometimes seems to be on a first-name basis with everybody, and everybody with him,” says McLane. “We shouldn’t let that familiarity cause us to overlook his remarkable contributions to radio engineering, to industry standards-setting and to new technology development. A small group of people are among the top technical opinion makers in our field. Smitty is among their leaders.”
“We are so proud of Milford Smith on receiving this distinguished honor from Radio World,” said Greater Media Chairman & CEO Peter Smyth. “He is a shining example of someone who continues to make Greater Media and the radio industry greater on a daily basis. It is a privilege to have him on our senior management team.”
In addition to his work at Greater Media, Smith is chairman of the standards-setting National Radio Systems Committee. He has served on its IBOC standards development working group, its RBDS subcommittee and its AM Broadcasting subcommittee; and he is the former long-time chairman of its DAB subcommittee.
He is a past recipient of the Radio Engineering Achievement Award from the National Association of Broadcasters, and is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Society of Broadcast Engineers, the National Association of Radio and Telecommunications Engineers, the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers and the National Association of Broadcasters.
Last year’s recipient of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award was Gary Kline of Cumulus Media. Previous recipients include Jeff Littlejohn of Clear Channel, Clay Freinwald of Entercom, John Lyons of The Durst Organization, Michael Starling of National Public Radio and Richard “Andy” Andresen of Cumulus Media. Smith will be featured in an upcoming issue of Radio World newspaper and will receive a plaque commemorating the award.
