After more than 15 years, Tom Ray is leaving WOR(AM), in New York City.
Ray has opened an engineering consultancy, ready to tackle projects from minor facility repairs to complete reconstruction.
He’s also looking for other opportunities, he told Radio World.
Ray had been Chief Engineer of WOR and DOE of Buckley Broadcasting until the station was sold to Clear Channel late last year; his current title is AM chief engineer. He said the time was right; he’s tired of the commute from New Windsor, N.Y., some 60 miles north of NYC; the trip could stretch anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to two hours each way, depending on traffic, he told Radio World.
During Ray’s tenure at WOR, he had taken the station from an older analog facility into the digital world, culminating in the move of the WOR studio facility to Manhattan. This was the world’s first large scale Axia deployment, according to Ray. Subsequently, he built WOR a new transmitter facility in the New Jersey Meadowlands, retiring the former Lyndhurst, N.J. facility that had served WOR for 40 years.
Ray has been a vocal and visible proponent of HD Radio, and made WOR the first high-power full-time AM HD Radio station in the country. He wrote a book, “HD Radio Implementation,” published by Focal Press in conjunction with the SBE.
Ray has been on the SBE board, was chairman of SBE Chapter 15 in New York City for nine years, has been on the NAB’s Broadcast Engineering Conference Committee several times, serving as chairman of the committee twice.
His last official day at WOR is Feb. 28, however Ray said he’s offered to continue his services on a contract basis.
