with Jim Ragsdale, Chris Singleton, and Dave Van Dyke
Kent County High School - Register Here
25301 Lamb’s Meadow Road
Worton,
MD
21678
United States
The station is within the Kent County High School campus. Turning off MD route 298 into the school drive way, keep straight past the school’s main entrance to the rear parking lot. Then look to your left for the unremarkable double doors leading to the station, inside and to your right.
What: MEDIA FORWARD: WKHS – 50 Years of Broadcast Instruction
When: March 19, 2024 at 11:00 AM
Where: Kent County High School - Register Here
Address: 25301 Lamb’s Meadow Road
Worton, MD 21678 United States
Sponsors: WideOrbit and GatesAir
This SBE 37 / DC SMPTE meeting is in cooperation with SBE 46 - Baltimore.
Important notes - this meeting is a DAYTIME event, Tuesday 11 am – 2 pm to coincide with the high school instructional day. And while there will be a virtual component to the meeting, it will be less interactive that being there in person. The virtual component will include the presentation portion of the meeting, but of course won’t include the facility tour or lunch. We would be pleased to “see” you for virtual participation—use the link below to the right.
Join us to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of instruction of broadcast students at the high school. Plus interaction and short speeches to the students, plus a station tour, plus a bit of air time allowing the students to interview a few members live on air. We are also celebrating the SBE operator certification as being added to the curriculum for credence to the program in the Maryland state secondary education certification realm. Jim Ragsdale, SBE National Director, is flying in for the meeting from Indianapolis to present the station an award of thanks for the continued education of broadcast students in one of the few remaining such programs in the country. This event will be on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Dave Van Dyke is another student success story of the WKHS training program (1980 alumnus) and has been employed with Wide Orbit for past 17 years. He has worked his whole life in broadcast traffic, since graduating from University of Maryland in 1984. Wide Orbit radio automation is the heart of the station’s playout operation and students leave the program trained in its functionality.
Chris Singleton is a 1984 graduate of WKHS, and has been chief engineer of many radio stations in the DC + Baltimore markets over the past decades. For the past 16 years Chris decided to give back to the community and has both engineered and run and taught the radio instructional program for the board of education.
The WKHS radio station is owned by the board of education of Kent County and this week of Tuesday March 19th will commemorate 50 years or operation of this unique broadcast training program. WKHS is a class B1 full power FM station in the Baltimore DMA, with all facets operated by students and community volunteers. WKHS is one of the very few high power stations in the country with great success rate of employment to hundreds still in industry, including our own DC market engineer Fred Willard of Televisa/Univision. The station puts solid grade B signal into Baltimore city and has an omnidirectional reception radius of 60 miles.
This studio site is about a 70 mile (90 minute) drive from either the Baltimore or DC Beltways. If you can, take some time off and make an impression and share your wisdom and life experience with a young student. The young are impressionable and perhaps you’ll make a real imprint in guiding the future leaders of our industry.
A very special thanks to WideOrbit for sponsoring this meeting and light lunch, and to GatesAir for sponsoring the certification exam costs to the students.