Battison Receives SBE Lifetime Achievement Award

The Society of Broadcast Engineers presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to John H. Battison, P.E., CPBE on April 25. The award was presented at the Las VegasConvention Center during the Society’s spring Membership Meeting, held during the NAB convention.

As “Member #1,” John Battison is well known among members and the broadcast industry as the founder of the Society of Broadcast Engineers. That, in itself, is a monumental accomplishment, but Battison’s career has been long, diverse and full of accomplishments which have spanned the globe.

Battison moved to the United States from England in 1945 and went to work in 1947 with ABC in New York, where he designed network TV and FM stations. In 1952 he became the Director of Education for the National Radio Institute in Washington, D.C..

In 1954 he became the director of engineering and general manager of CHCT-TV in Calgary, Alberta. During the 50’s and 60’s he produced Burl Ives on the ABC Network and produced two shows on Dumont, CBS and NBC Networks. From 1968 to 1970 he worked in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as chief engineer of Saudi Television.

Much of John’s career has been as a consultant. His clients included Bing Crosby, owner of KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, the former Governor of New Mexico, John Burroughs and AmericanUniversity.

He has lectured on broadcasting at New YorkUniversity and AmericanUniversity. Known as the authority on directional transmitting antennas, he has taught at five of the six special directional antenna seminars given by NAB. In 1980, he became a U.S. member of the FCC delegation attending the Region II, Medium Wave World Administrative Radio Conference in Buenos Aires; and in 1979, was selected to travel to Moscow as the U.S. delegate at the Popoff Conference.

Battison designed a 1,200 kW directional antenna system in Yugoslavia and was a consultant to the Ugandan government in planning their national TV system. In 1981, he lectured at Peking Institute of Broadcasting in China as an official guest of the government.

Battison has authored more than 15 technical books and over 500 technical articles. From 1964 to 1967 he served as editor of the Journal of Society of Broadcast Engineers and is a former editor of Broadcast Engineering, a contributing editor for Public Telecommunications Review and technical editor of Radio magazine.

Of course, John was the driving force behind the organization of the SBE. While editor of Broadcast Engineering, he wrote an editorial in 1961 which suggested that it was time for a new organization to be formed which would have the interests of the broadcast engineer as its sole mission.  Some engineers at the time were members of the Institute of Radio Engineers. Battison had been a member of this group since 1941 but had growing concerns that it wasn’t meeting the needs of the average broadcast engineer. There was talk that this group would become part of the larger American Institute of Electrical Engineers, later to be known as the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers; IEEE. This further concerned Battison as he feared the interests of broadcast engineers would be buried even further in the shadows among the larger organization’s multiple engineering interests.  Those two organizations eventually did join forces in 1963.

Battison received more than 30 letters in response to his editorial and hoped that someone would come forward to organize the new group. However, after two years of waiting, no surfaced to take the lead, so he decided to do it himself.

In April 1963, Battison ran an application form for the new organization in Broadcast Engineering, and with the help of his family, mailed letters to almost 5,000 radio and television chief engineers across the country, inviting them to join.  The response was sufficient enough that Battison decided to call the first official meeting during the 1964 NAB convention in Chicago.  His leadership in the early days set the course for the organization. One that would grow to more than 5,700 members in the U.S. and 25 other countries in 111 chapters.

Battison’s career has merited much recognition, including the NAB Achievement Award for Radio in 1998 and being named a Fellow of SBE in 1986. He was nominated as a Commissioner to the FCC in 1961 and 1973 by Senator Joseph Montoya and was appointed Colonel-aide-de-campe to Governor Sims of New Mexico. He is listed in Who’s Who in America.

Battison is also an ordained priest in the Anglican Church and was a pilot in England’s Royal Air Force for six and half years during World War Two.

SBE’s Lifetime Achievement award has been presented to a small but impressive group who have distinguished themselves over a long career. Past recipients include James C. Wulliman, CPBE; Benjamin Wolfe, CSBE; Philo T. Farnsworth; Pem Farnsworth; Morris H. Blum, CBT; Richard A. Rudman, CPBE and Richard W. Burden, CPBE.  Nominations are secret and are voted on by the National Board of Directors.  Nominees must be members of SBE whose career spans at least 40 years.