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ALEXANDRIA, Va. Jeff Littlejohn will receive the 2008 Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award from the editors of Radio World, the newspaper 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.
Jeff Littlejohn is Executive Vice President, Distribution Development for Clear Channel Broadcasting Inc., responsible for the oversight of all technical aspects for the radio division. Additionally, he is focused on establishing new means for distributing Clear Channel’s content beyond analog AM and FM, including HD Radio, cellular, Internet streaming and podcasting.
“Radio World honors Jeff for his significant industry leadership throughout his career,” McLane said. “But he’s not just a fine engineer and manager. Both Clear Channel Radio and Jeff’s role there have evolved a great deal in recent years. Now, at a time of business uncertainty and questioning about radio’s direction, he’s a leading technical executive who is having immense influence in how the medium develops its new data tools and operating models.”
Under Littlejohn’s guidance, Clear Channel Radio’s Total Traffic Network is delivering real-time traffic data over its Radio Data System Traffic Message Channel for navigation-equipped vehicles and devices for more than 500,000 paid subscribers. Littlejohn led a team in establishing the first RDS-TMC traffic service in North America. The service is used by leading navigation and automotive manufacturers including BMW North America, Garmin International, TomTom, Volvo Cars of North America, Avis/Budget Rental Cars and Navigon.
Littlejohn has taken a prominent role in guiding Clear Channel’s HD Radio rollout, implementing new features such as HD-R “tagging” technology and lobbying manufacturers to add HD Radio as a feature. Separately, he and Clear Channel have worked closely with the mobile industry, signing deals to provide numerous channels of content to companies including Sprint, US Cellular and Metro PCS. His group of Clear Channel employees also recently has taken on the responsibility for managing the platform and infrastructure of CC Online Music and Radio.
He is a member of several industry committees including the National Radio Systems Committee and various groups within the National Association of Broadcasters. He is a member of the board of directors for iBiquity Digital Corp., the developers of HD Radio.
Prior to joining Clear Channel, Littlejohn was vice president of engineering for AMFM Inc. and Chancellor Broadcasting.
Last year’s recipient of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award was Clay Freinwald of Entercom. Previous recipients include John Lyons of The Durst Organization, Michael Starling of National Public Radio and Richard “Andy” Andresen of Cumulus Media.
Littlejohn will be featured in an upcoming issue of Radio World newspaper and will receive a plaque commemorating the award.
