Smitty is, as we say in radio, on the beach at the moment.
Milford Smith is out of a job. Greater Media Inc.’s longtime vice president of engineering had been with the company for 32 years but his position was eliminated when Beasley Broadcast Group acquired the company.
Smith, 68, says he is still doing some contract work for Beasley, and his corporate contact information remains in effect for the time being.
Before Greater Media, he worked for Tribune Broadcasting in New York, then held an executive technical position at First Media Corp. In 2005 he received the Radio Engineering Achievement Award from the National Association of Broadcasters; in 2010 he was honored with the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award.
He has been active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE), the AM Radio Preservation Alliance, the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE) and the NAB’s Radio Technology Committee.
And many radio engineers know him because he has chaired the standards-setting National Radio Systems Committee since 2007; he was prominent before that in the group’s work on a digital radio standard for the United States, when he chaired the committee’s DAB Subcommittee.
“Retirement was surely not on my radar, at least not for awhile,” he tells Radio World. “After 50 years of doing this, I still very much enjoy the work — especially the people — and would surely love to continue in the industry in some capacity.
“We were very fortunate to have had truly exceptional engineers at Greater Media and were thus able to run a first class engineering operation during my time at the company. It would be amazing to be able to recreate that scenario. But, I’d be game for anything radio related.”
