Who Cares?

Last night Lois and I attended a basketball game at St. Mary's high school. At one corner of the court, a guy sat at a table that held some electronic equipment. Since the scorekeepers were on the other side of the gym, I had no idea what the guy was doing. So, I asked him.

"What are you up to here?"

"I'm announcing the game for La Junta tonight."

When I was a boy, my father was in the radio business and I went with him on remote broadcasts. I remember that besides the announcer, it took an engineer to set up the equipment, connect it to a special telephone line, and to balance the sound from the microphones.

Back at St. Mary's gym, I noticed a small helical shaped antenna. I asked if the antenna connected to a sound truck.

"No," he said, "it's a cell phone antenna. I use a cell phone connection to broadcast to the station."

"How do you talk to the station if you need to coordinate something?" 

"Just use this cell phone," grabbing the phone on his belt.

"So, you do all of this by cell phone?"

"Yep, except when I don't have cell service, then I have to use a phone line. That's a pain."

He then spent five more minutes telling me all about his life as an announcer and about all of his broadcasting equipment--which would fit in a shoe box.

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For many, this is not much of a fabulous reality, but for an electrical engineer, it is fabulous. I doubt that anyone else in the gym noticed or even cared.