Gil Moor and Bill Brown at the 2010 Radio Show in Philadelphia.
Photo by Doug Vernier. William G. “Bill” Brown, co-founder and principal of Atlanta-area-based broadcast engineering consultancy Bromo Communications, passed away on Sept. 9. He was 75.
Brown started Bromo Communications with partner Gil Moor to own and operate while providing engineering services to other stations. The name came from BROwn and MOor.
Over the years, Brown (often with Moor as a partner) owned parts of WMOG(AM), Brunswick, Ga.; WAYX(AM)/WLTE(FM), Waycross, Ga.; WTIF(AM)/WJYF(FM), Tifton, Ga.; WWWQ(AM)/WPFM(FM), Panama City, Fla.; WGCO(FM), Midway/Savannah, Ga.; and WWAA(AM), Avondale Estates/Atlanta.
Moor says, “Bill excelled in the AM arena. In earlier days, he would go on location to personally make field intensity measurements. Often these ‘real-world’ measurements made the difference between a power increase or not.”
According to Moor, after several years, the focus of the company turned to broadcast technical consulting (though one with management and business experience).
He says, “In the late ’80s, we purchased the engineering business of Bob Purcell in the Washington, D.C. area. For several years, Bill and Jeff Brock worked out of the Washington office while Stu Graham and I worked out of the St. Simons office. Later, with greater dependence on electronically-filed documents, we combined both offices into the St. Simons office.”
Moor adds, “In the earlier days, when we operated from St. Simons Island, Bill loved to use the company airplane for business (and sometimes pleasure). Often on weekends, he was at the airport waxing, shining, vacuuming or otherwise fiddling with the plane.”
Brown was a U.S. Army veteran. He also worked as an engineer at WQXI(AM), Atlanta and built WACX, Austell, Ga., when he got out of the army. Moor says, “I met him when I got a job at WACX, when I had returned from an army tour of duty in Vietnam in 1970.”
Moor remembers, “Over the decades, it could be said that Bill was an honest man and partner. In the engineering business, clients expect honesty… and that is what they got from Bill and continue to get from Bromo Communications.”
On the unusual name, Moor explains, “It was never intended to be the name of an operating company. It was a name we used in a petition for a rulemaking to add an FM channel to Brunswick, Ga. in the early ’70s. It only became the name of our engineering company by default.”
“Bill and I worked well together. He was the partner who wanted to expand and grow while I was the partner who wanted to think about things longer and to be more cautious.”
