Newswatch

Cummis Elected to Second Term

Andrea Cummis will serve another term as president of the Society of Broadcast Engineers. Cummis, CBT, CTO, is chief technical officer of PBS39/WLVT(TV) in Bethlehem, Pa.

A member of SBE Chapter 15 in New York City, she became the first woman to hold the president’s role when elected last year.

Also re-elected was Vice President Ted Hand of SBE Chapter 45 in Charlotte, N.C.

Elected to two-year terms on the SBE board were David Antoine, Chapter 15 New York City; Greg Dahl, Chapter 96 Rockford, Ill.; Mark Heller, Chapter 80 Fox Valley, Wis.; Tom McGinley, Chapter 16 Seattle; Shane Toven, Chapter 43 Sacramento, Calif.; and Fred Willard, Chapter 37 Washington, D.C.

McGinley, Toven and Willard are incumbents and were reelected.

Secretary Kevin Trueblood and Treasurer Jason Ornellas ran for one other’s offices and will swap duties when sworn in this fall. Wayne Pecena continues as immediate past president.

Jim Loupas Dies, Age 83

Longtime technical consultant Jim Loupas died in August. According to his obituary, he was 83 and lived in Coppell, Texas.

“Sound was always his passion,” his obituary stated. “Radio, being pure sound, was his vocation and avocation since he was a high-school kid skipping school to run remotes for his hometown radio stations.”

Loupas was director of engineering at WCFL in Chicago in the 1970s before forming a firm to consult radio, TV and recording companies.

He authored a Radio World commentary in 2004 arguing that while new digital radio formats might have appeal, analog signals would continue to be “hugely important.”

“The listener, after all, is our end user — our customer,” he wrote. “The listener’s perceptions are what drive our numbers, both in the ratings books and at the bottom line. The listener’s convenience and satisfaction are what make a radio station successful. We get lost sometimes in the airy realms of new technology, and we think everybody else cares as much as we do. But do they? Of course not. It’s our job to sound good to the listener, no matter what technology or combination of technology is used to receive our signals. It’s as simple as that.”