David Stewart has left Univision Radio after more than 22 years with the company and its predecessors.
He had been VP of engineering; he said Mark Stennett is handling things after his departure.
“I’ve traded the day-to-day corporate office gig for running my own consultancy offering ‘Fractional D.E.’ — director of engineering — services and upgrade counseling and analysis,” Stewart said. “I also spend some time with the small group of radio stations I’ve partnered in.”
Stewart was engineering manager for the El Paso stations of Tichenor Media in its pre-HBC days and subsequently held titles of corporate engineer, corporate chief engineer, director of engineering and vice president of engineering for Heftel Broadcasting, Hispanic Broadcasting and Univision Radio.
He worked on numerous projects — “We built up KDXX(FM), KESS(FM) and KFLC(AM) in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, KAMA(FM) in the Houston area, KBBT(FM) and KGSX in San Antonio, WADO(AM) in New York, KRGT(FM) in Las Vegas, and on and on.”
He also is part-owner of KPET(AM) and KBXJ(FM), and the partners are about to buy into a third station in the Wichita Falls area. Stewart is hoping to move further into station development, “along the lines of an Independence Media or First Broadcasting” but on a smaller scale in small and medium markets for FM, and medium and major markets for AMs.
His other goal is to offer ���a fractional director of engineer service for yet-to-be-formed groups that I believe will grow out of the current environment,” he said. “I think that a year or two down the road we will see a number of new, fairly sophisticated ‘mom and pop’ stations run by seasoned execs who’ve left or will be cast off from big corporate-oriented companies.”
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