Dennis Thompson
It was nice to see many of you at last months Pizza Bash, always a fun evening. As usual, officer elections were held and, as usual, the sound of the freight train was heard! Our 2013 crew are; Ken Holden, Chairman; Pat Fennacy, Vice Chairman; and Steve Dresser, Secretary/Treasurer. Please help them out this year with any suggestions or leads you may have for upcoming meetings. Also consider becoming a member of your local SBE Chapter 66 (if you’re not already) and when possible, attending the monthly meetings. We’ve been known to put on a good show why not be a part of it! This month is no exception as we have a presentation on the new CALM act. Ken Dillard, Senior Enterprise Account Executive of Digital Nirvana will be hosting lunch at the HomeTown buffet, read more about the meeting HERE.
One of the big stories this month was the hacking of EAS equipment in certain stations. This incident caused the FCC to release an advisory for everyone to change their passwords. It appears some stations installed a certain brand of EAS equipment whose default password was easy to come by thereby providing an entrance (when left unchanged) for hackers to announce that the zombies were coming in an official way. It appears that of the six station whose systems were breached, all were still using the default password and all were either without firewalls or using improperly provisioned firewalls.
If your facility has not previously looked at the logs of “attempted entries” to your system, doing so could be enlightening. Remember: most stations now have some sort of IP connection for remote control, consoles, processors, and more. All of these need protection.
Broadcasters in Illinois are now considered to be first responders. So, what exactly does that mean? Let’s say there a big storm and you need to get to the transmitter site to get your station back on the air, or to haul fuel in for the generator. One of the first things you are going to run into is a police line and that’s as far as you can go–unless, you’re considered a first responder. Wisconsin was the first State to implement this, and special training and certification are required. Can California be far behind?
Finally, a tip of the hat to Petro Vlahos, who died this month at 96. Without this man’s pioneering efforts a lot of what we see on TV and in Film today would have not been possible. He is the man that is credited with developing the blue and green screen composite photography technique used in every special-effect laden movie, television show and video game systems that allows filmmakers to superimpose one scene over another. Thank you, Vlahos! Without you how would Al Radka have made all those dancing clothes commercials for Lamours Cleaners.
See you at the meeting.
