Radio World has named broadcast radio engineer Rich Rarey, CEA, CBNT, as technical editor of Radio World Engineering Extra, a NewBay Media publication now in its 11th year.
Rarey, right, succeeds Michael LeClair, who has guided RWEE since its launch. Rarey is principal of RAREworks LLC, a consultancy firm dedicated to enriching the media landscape through the application of innovative technology. He is former director of NPR Labs.
LeClair relinquishes the editor’s title due to increased responsibilities in his full-time job as chief engineer of Boston public station WBUR(FM) but will continue as a regular contributor to the publication. The change is effective with the February 2015 issue.
“We’re thrilled that Rich will expand his role here by leading the editorial content of our Engineering Extra,” said Paul McLane, editor in chief of Radio World and editorial director of NewBay Media’s Broadcast Video Group. “When we launched this deep-dive technical publication, we knew we needed the right person to guide it; and Michael LeClair has been superb. We’ve been fortunate to have an engineer of his caliber leading RWEE for more than a decade. He’s an insightful technology writer, an outstanding editor and a good friend.
“In Rich Rarey we welcome a veteran engineer and technologist who’s been part of the Radio World circle of contributors for more than 20 years.”
At NPR Labs, Rarey received industry accolades for the organization’s work in media accessibility; imaginative solutions for real-time captioning; and creation of a novel, accessible national alerting infrastructure. His work was a key part in the development of technology for which NPR Labs received innovation awards from the National Association of Broadcasters and Consumer Electronics Association.
A radio and audio buff since age 13, Rarey graduated cum laude from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, with a bachelor of science in communications. A week later, he joined NPR as engineer for its bureau in Chicago and went on to work with the public radio organization for 34 years. Over that time he was the first technical director of “Weekend Edition/Saturday with Scott Simon” and “Weekend Edition/Sunday with Susan Stamberg.” He traveled widely as an NPR broadcast/recording tech; and he supervised the NPR Master Control facility, building and managing automated streams for NPR Worldwide and public station HD Radio channels. He developed software for and maintained the automation system for NPR’s first online audio stream at npr.org and helped move NPR into the 21st century by building ingest servers for audio through various channels. He holds a private pilot’s license
Radio World Engineering Extra is produced six times annually and delivers hard-core technical content, white papers and columns to a targeted readership of industry engineering professionals. Subscribe here. The publisher is John Casey.
