Radio World - November 19, 2008 - (Page 3)

November 19, 2008 NEWS radioworld.com | Radio World 3 Buterbaugh Legendary in Upper Midwest Broadcast Engineer Remembered for His Influence on the Sounds of Classic AMs by Randy J. Stine DETROIT Ed Buterbaugh would have made most anyone’s list of the “most respected” engineers. That probably never really mattered to Buterbaugh. Friends say that whether he was building new radio studios or engineering a University of Michigan football game, Buterbaugh was comfortable with his place within the profession. Buterbaugh, a longtime fixture in Detroit radio and respected broadcast engineer, passed away from bladder cancer in September. He was 65. He had engineered three of the top AM radio stations in North America. He worked for a stint at WABC(AM) in New York, followed by CKLW(AM) in Windsor, Ontario, a station that dominated Detroit’s radio ratings for many years in the 1970s. He finished his career at Citadel’s WJR(AM) in Detroit and retired in late 2004. Many engineers consider Buterbaugh a driving force in AM audio quality. He was relentless in his pursuit of AM fidelity and was a respected talent not only within the discipline of broadcast engineering but by broadcasters in general, friends and colleagues say. “For example, for the national anthem at University of Michigan games, ABC-TV and ESPN were satisfied using a single Shure M58 microphone. Not Ed. We used a stereo SASS mic on digital delays so the music was synchronized with the talent’s microphones in the booth. All angles were always considered,” Arnaut said. Then there was the time Buterbaugh coordinated a live remote with Cadillac for WJR. The remote consisted of morning talent Paul W. Smith riding through town broadcasting from the back seat of a new car with an engineering van in tow containing the necessary wireless receiver and IFB, Arnaut said. “The topper was Ed getting on the phone with the Bose radio company to complain about the sub-standard AM tuner section of the Bose Acoustic Wave desktop receiver. “He spent a half-hour on the phone with Dr. (Amar) Bose himself recommending solutions that could be impleButerbaugh appeared in a brochure for mented in the Wave Radio,” Pacific Recorders about a rebuild at Arnaut said. WJR around 1987. he began work for WDAD(AM) as a 14year-old, engineering remote broadcasts and running audio for Sunday morning church services, said Pam Buterbaugh, Ed’s wife of more than 42 years. “I recall him telling me after we first met when he was in high school that he would work for WABC and CKLW someday. We could listen to both stations where we grew up and he always said they sounded the best,” she said. “He was serious about making his stations sound better. And not just better, but the best,” said Alan Buterbaugh, Ed’s son and senior vice president for business development for Wireless Ronin Technologies. “He enjoyed nothing more than packing a cooler of beer and heading to his house on the beach on Lake Erie and listening to all the stations on the dial to see how his compared.” All about the sound Buterbaugh’s commitment to details knew no limit, said Michael Fezzey, president/general manager of WJR. “Ed did everything with excellence in mind. He was a fun-loving, hard-driving broadcast engineer who battled for the resources to improve the sound of his stations.” Chris Arnaut, IT manager for WDIV(TV), Detroit, was hired by Buterbaugh in 1996 as a bench tech and remote engineer. “Ed had a passion for audio supremacy over everyone else. Not for his own ego, but rather for his own deeply rooted love of audio.” Arnaut said his Buterbaugh’s penchant for perfection led to audio standards that often brought stares from contemporaries. It was that doggedness that fellow broadcast engineers admired, said Tony Butler, assistant CE at WJR. “He never settled for second best. His detail in pursuit of quality was very evident,” Butler said. “One of the most obvious daily reminders of Ed’s legacy is the quality sound of WJR.” Buterbaugh was a strong believer in public safety and warning and was involved with EAS affairs, said Larry Estlack, director of technology for the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. Don Backus, vice president of sales and marketing for ENCO Systems, said, “Keeping WJR on the air at all times was the most important thing to Ed. When ENCO installed digital automaton systems for (WJR) in 2000, one of the first things he told me was ‘WJR cannot go off the air,’ and he meant it,” Backus said. That commitment was tested during the blackout of 2003 when widespread power outages struck parts of the eastern third of the United States, Backus recalled. “I remember how WJR stayed on the air through it all while some other Detroit stations struggled to do so,” Backus said. Buterbaugh’s radio experience dated to his teens. He was raised in the community of Indiana in the state of Pennsylvania, where Buterbaugh attended Grantham College of Engineering near Washington for radio engineering and later went to work for WEAM(AM) in Arlington, Va. He joined WABC(AM) in New York in the late 1960s to work as a station engineer with DJ Cousin Brucie in the evenings. “(Ed) was thrilled to be in a major market,” his wife said. It was back to WEAM in the early 1970s for a short time before he joined CKLW(AM) in Windsor, Ontario, in 1972. ‘Big booming sound’ Buterbaugh is credited by colleagues with constructing the on-air sound of the station, known as “the Big 8 CKLW,” with its cast of boss jocks and high-energy newscasts. “He was the mastermind behind the big booming sound of the station during its reign over Detroit radio in the mid-1970s,” said Art Voulo, Jr., radio historian and journalist. “The station sound was bigger and better than anything else on AM.” CKLW was a broadcast juggernaut across parts of the upper Midwest, those familiar with Detroit radio history said. “Those were great times and Ed loved every minute of it. He was very busy. But (CKLW staff) did a lot of partying and See BUTERBAUGH, page 5 http://www.radioworld.com http://www.bswusa.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Radio World - November 19, 2008

Radio World - November 19, 2008 IBOC+Satellite? Subscribers Not Impressed The New World of AM DA MoM Contents Newswatch Buterbaugh Legendary in Upper Midwest From the Editor Buterbaugh: His Colleagues Look Back Workbench: What’s Wrong With This Picture? KFI Back at Full Power With New Tower 3G or Not 3G? That Is the Question Exploring HD Radio Availability in Philadelphia HD Radio Scoreboard Digital News GEP For That Bird Without a Wire A Chat With Bay Country Radiolicious Brings Radio to iPhones People News Belar FMHD-1 Clears the Skies Reader’s Forum Radio Thrives in Digital Age A Vote for Change

Radio World - November 19, 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.