Harris Broadcast splits

[BroadcastDoc]

Just announced today that Harris Broadcast has split into two entities:

GatesAir will be a pure-play Radio/TV solutions provider - studio, TV, Radio.

Imagine Communications will deal with IP and digital solutions.

More can be found at their website: harrisbroadcast.com

[NECRAT]

Yahoo has an article on it.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/harris-br ... ntentstory

[PID_Stop]

This morning my inbox yielded a truly bizarre email from Charlie Vogt (CEO of the company formerly known as Harris), written in the densest corporate-speak I have read in years, basically giving the industry a spanking for its technological backwardness. He might have some interesting ideas -- hard to tell, as the email is not big on tangible product detail -- but it comes across more like a Dilbert plotline. It doesn't help that he has less than a year in the broadcast industry, and doesn't seem to speak the language.

We are highly dependent on Harris equipment -- transmitters and racks full of studio gear from companies they absorbed like Leitch -- in addition to their OSI traffic system. This is not giving me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

-- Jeff

[Deep Thought]

You're a better man than me. My corporate blabber alarms went off very early in that diatribe so it went into the circular file before I got to the second paragraph.

[PID_Stop]

I read it through to the end -- several times. The sense I get is that this fellow is out to make our facility (and possibly our industry) obsolete, which is a scary prospect considering that his company built some of our most critical equipment.

[RGORJANCE]

Back in the day, when I had the big blue tatoo on my bu....errrr, chest, our group of sales types opined that the way things were going, it would turn into an RCA look alike.

I didn't really read the email that closely. Glad to hear you guys did.

There is a lot of the stuff out there that deserves continued support. Nautel really does "get it".

Fossil

[Deep Thought]

Nautel may "get it" but they better start hitting ship dates or they'll RCA themselves too. Three transmitters that were supposed to be in Sacramento two weeks ago still aren't there.

[PID_Stop]

Unfortunately, there aren't that many other companies making television transmitters in this country -- Comark is the only one that comes to mind at the moment. Seeing other stations in our market off the air for days at a time while parts come in from overseas makes me a bit reluctant to look seriously at otherwise reputable companies like Thales or R&S.

It's all the more frustrating since General Electric used to build transmitters about seven miles from where I'm sitting. Now Electronics Park is just a brownfield.

Sigh.

[NECRAT]

Unfortunately, there aren't that many other companies making television transmitters in this country -- Comark is the only one that comes to mind at the moment. Seeing other stations in our market off the air for days at a time while parts come in from overseas makes me a bit reluctant to look seriously at otherwise reputable companies like Thales or R&S.

It's all the more frustrating since General Electric used to build transmitters about seven miles from where I'm sitting. Now Electronics Park is just a brownfield.

Sigh.

The Comark Transmitters are all now fully built in the US. Even the VHF solid state rigs. The Ultimate/Optimum crap with the old MODAP exciters are long gone.
The service engineers who have been there for ages, still are there, and now that they aren't under the Grass Valley/Thomson thumb, you can go back to calling them directly again.