Frank Foti
Frank Foti and Jay Adrick will receive engineering honors from the NAB at the spring show; the association announced that the men will receive its Radio and TV Engineering Achievement Awards, respectively.
NAB also will give a special engineering honor this year to Leonard J. Charles.
Foti is CEO of the Telos Alliance. “A gifted and largely self-taught radio engineer, Foti first made his mark on the industry as chief engineer at a number of legendary FM stations, starting in the late 1970s at WMMS/WHK, Cleveland, through KSAN/KNEW, San Francisco, and ultimately to WHTZ (“Z-100”), New York,” NAB states in the announcement.
“By the late 1980s, his audio processing prowess was so in demand that he shifted from station work to full-time manufacturing, founding Cutting Edge Technologies. In 1992, he joined forces with Steve Church’s Telos Systems, rebranding his audio processing line as the Omnia Audio division of Telos. Foti now serves as CEO of the Telos Alliance.”
NAB noted Foti’s “continuous ability to innovate, developing a long list of advances to the art of broadcast audio processing. Some of these developments have subsequently been patented and/or become well established elements within the industry.” It described his “tireless evangelism toward the general improvement of broadcast audio quality,” and made mention of his work in single sideband suppressed carrier modulation for FM stereo subcarriers.
Jay Adrick
Just three years ago, the award went to Foti’s partner at Telos, the late Steve Church.
TV recipient Jay Adrick is VP of broadcast technology in the CTO Group of Harris Corp. “He has been with Harris since 1996, when it acquired Midwest Communications, where Adrick had worked since 1978,” NAB stated. “Previously he had been a professor of broadcast communications and director of radio and TV at Xavier University.” He served in the Navy and worked as an engineer and design consultant at radio and TV stations in Ohio.
NAB said Adrick’s career “has been marked by strong design and project leadership skills, coupled with strategic vision and formidable educational abilities.” It said he played a notable role in the conversion to digital television, and continues to work on the rollout of ATSC mobile digital television. “His unceasing enthusiasm toward broadcasting is often cited as a unifying force that has provided significant contribution to many collaborative industry efforts.”
Among other things, he has been vice chair and on the board of ATSC, and he chaired the Open Mobile Video Coalition Mobile DTV Forum. He led the ATSC’s development of a mobile emergency alerting system for Mobile DTV.
Leonard Charles
And NAB said it will present a special Service to Broadcast Engineering award to Leonard J. Charles, director of engineering, Midwest, for Morgan Murphy Media. It cited his “outstanding service to his company and the broadcast industry, and for furthering the goals and objectives of the SBE.” Among other contributions, Charles has served on the FCC National Advisory Committee for EAS and the FCC Communications Security Reliability and Interoperability Council, the Wisconsin State Emergency Communications Committee and its Amber Alert Committee, the Dane County (Wis.) EAS Committee, the MSTV Engineering Committee and the NAB TV Technology Committee.
He is active in the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and has chaired its Broadcasters Clinic; and, NAB said, he is “widely recognized for his work in improving the Emergency Alert System (EAS), and for educating broadcasters on EAS compliance.”
