The National Association of Broadcasters has presented its 2021 Radio Engineering Achievement Award to David Hershberger. The veteran engineer retired as senior scientist with Continental Electronics in 2017.
NAB describes Hershberger as a “true renaissance broadcast engineer” with over four decades of experience.
Hershberger, a graduate of University of Illinois with a master’s in electrical engineering, joined the broadcast group at Harris Broadcast in 1975 designing and refining broadcast transmission products. In addition, he served in various engineering roles at Grass Valley Group and Axcera.
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Hershberger focused primarily on exciters and modulators for FM transmitters, and low-level signal processing, and is credited with co-developing the world’s first digital FM exciter as an experimental prototype, according to a NAB press release announcing the award. He holds 21 U.S. patents.
“Among many people who have helped me along the way I want to thank Geoff Mendenhall (a former co-worker at Harris), who showed me how to turn ideas in products. And Dan Dickey (president of Continental Electronics) gave me the best advice of my career, and that was to learn MATLAB. I’m glad I did,” Hershberger said during today’s online awards presentation.
NAB engineering award winners are nominated by their peers for significant contributions for advancing the state of the art in broadcast engineering. Sam Matheny, executive vice president and chief technology officer of NAB, hosted the NAB Amplify streaming event, which also featured keynote conversation with Mike Chapman, a partner and Americas Media Lead at Kearney, a management consulting firm specializing in corporate and growth strategy and business transformation.
NAB presents two engineering achievement awards each year — one for achievements in radio and the other for television. Dave Folsom of Pearl TV was named recipient of the 2021 NAB Engineering Achievement Award for Television.
The NAB Service to Broadcast Engineering Award is presented periodically to individuals who have provided extraordinary service to the industry. Today NAB announced Grady Dreasler, corporate director of engineering and technology at Quincy Media, as recipient of its 2021 service award recipient.
In addition, the broadcaster association also presented its Digital Leadership Award during today’s Amplify presentation to Adam Wiener, executive VP and GM of CBS Local Digital Media.