ALEXANDRIA, VA. Doug Lung has a long history in the television industry as an engineer and writer. He has worked for NBC and Telemundo since 1985, rising to his current position as the vice president of technology for NBC Stations western region.
Dougs popular columns and articles in TV Technology magazine (a sister publication to Broadcast Engineering Extra) stretch back more than 25 years, and his calm insight into transmission concepts helped many readers work through the issues during broadcasts transition to digital 10 years ago. Doug agreed to answer some questions about his experience installing transmitters and antennas in tall buildings, such as the World Trade Center (new and old), the Empire State Building and the John Hancock Building in Chicago.
WNBC needed to install auxiliary panel antennas on the outside of the mast on the original World Trade Center in NYC.
BE Extra: What are some of the key factors in a successful transmitter installation in a tall building? What item needs to be addressed first?
Lung: The first thing to consider is whether the tall building you are looking at has the infrastructure to support the installation you are planning, both for the antenna and the transmitter. Some of the critical items include the amount of power available, power reliability, transmitter cooling options and options for emergency power. One of the challenges broadcasters in New York City faced after 9/11 was getting enough power to the upper floors of the Empire State Building where the transmitters would be located.
BE Extra: Why is it important to work with contractors who already know the building? Cant a good engineering company get the necessary information from blueprints or a site inspection?
Lung: Blueprints usually dont show existing transmission line runs in the building and, depending on the age of the building, may not show other impediments to connecting the output of the transmitter to the input of the antenna. The other consideration is what, for lack of a better term, Ill call building culture. Unlike a ground-based transmitter room, a location on top of a high-rise is going to involve dealing with other tenants, some of whom wont be broadcasters, and with management that is as concerned about the welfare of the other high-priced top-floor tenants as they are with your desire to put a 500 kW generator on the floor above a lawyers office. Having a contractor who knows the building culture will save you a lot of time and money. On one of the two top high-rises in a major city I wont mention, I had a need to get a satellite dish to the roof. It wouldnt fit through the doors to the roof. I hired a contractor who did a lot of work in the building and he was able to work out a deal with the restaurant a floor or few below to hoist the dish up from the restaurants patio early one morning.
Access to WNJUs antenna on top of the original World Trade Center
BE Extra: Is it reasonable to estimate the installation costs up front and stick to the budget? What are a couple of the budget busters youve seen?
Lung: My experience working with tall buildings is to take your best guess estimate based on quotes and double it. It sounds extreme, but in a major urban area where work often has to be done overnight when workers are being paid double time for a full day when only working four hours, costs add up. If you cant get the antenna tuned or the work completed, youre looking at another night. Things always crop up that you dont expect. Even inside work can be challenging. After spending a few days working on a transmission line run you may find there is a space that an eight-inch line just wont fit through and you have to start over.
BE Extra: How do you keep the transmitter and associated gear cool? Are there any special issues in skyscrapers?
Lung: Ground-based transmitters can put a heat exchanger on a pad outside and be done with it. Using heat exchangers in a high-rise isnt as easy because of the air flow around the building. You might not be able to install a fan big enough to pull enough air over your heat exchanger to keep your transmitter happy. Air-cooled transmitters can be a problem for the same reason. One UHF analog station in Chicago had to resort to running tap water through its transmitter to cool it and then dump the water down a drain. As you can imagine, that was incredibly expensive. Not surprisingly, that station was also one of the first, if not the first, to deploy a high-power air-cooled klystrode transmitter. The simplest option, if it is available, it to use the buildings HVAC condenser water. Make sure the pumps arent turned off on weekends. On a recent installation in the John Hancock building in Chicago, I was surprised at the large amount of junk in the water. Fortunately the station had installed an extensive filtering system. A water-to-water heat exchanger is a must to keep this junk from getting into the transmitter.
Access space for WNJUs and WXTVs transmission line was cramped on the original World Trade Center.
BE Extra: How about installing microwave dishes? Inside? Outside?
Lung: Youll find different buildings have different options for microwaves. At Willis Tower in Chicago, stations usually aim their microwaves out a window, making deals with other stations and building management to use different windows if they dont have ones facing the right direction. Other buildings may have outside space for microwave dishes. One thing to keep in mind for ENG receive antennas is that placing one lower on the side of the building is better than installing it low on a tower near the center of the buildings roof. For a building with large roof, like the original World Trade Center, the roof prevented use of the ENG antenna for shots close to the building.
BE Extra: Will any antenna design work or might there need to be compromises for
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
20/10/2025
Inside TAMS: How Time-Addressable Media Stores could redefine sports workflows By Paul Markham
Friday, October 17, 2025 - 08:57
Print This Story
A penalty...
20/10/2025
Transformational production: Inside TVN's remote production push for the DFL...
20/10/2025
How NBC Sports Transitioned Stamford Facility to One Format: 1080p HDRMulti-year plan harmonizes workflows, simplifies operationsBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial ...
20/10/2025
NBA on NBC' Studio Production Team Is Ready for Tip-Off With Coast-to-Coast...
20/10/2025
Under pressure: TVN CEO Markus Osthaus considers the German sports broadcasting ...
20/10/2025
(L-R) Maria Dizzia, Carmen Emmi, and Russell Tovey attend the Plainclothes pre...
20/10/2025
In March, we launched Concerts Near You to help listeners find concerts from their favorite artists. Since then, more than 3 million people have used it to disc...
20/10/2025
Em diversas cidades do Brasil, um movimento tem se fortalecido para celebrar o poder, a beleza e a profundidade da criatividade negra. O Dia AMPLIFIKA, agora em...
20/10/2025
In cities across Brazil, a movement is growing that celebrates the power, beauty, and depth of Black creativity. AMPLIFIKA Day, now in its fifth edition, return...
20/10/2025
Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft rendering...
20/10/2025
DENVER and MUNICH Imagine Communications today announced its plans to acquire Pixel Power Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Rohde & Schwarz. Financial terms of...
20/10/2025
LOS ANGELES G Morgan has joined Globecast, a provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, as executive vice president of sales, Globecast Am...
20/10/2025
PLYMOUTH, Wisc. Heartland Video Systems and Zixi have partnered to enable broadcast-quality live video delivery over any IP network....
20/10/2025
A. R. Rahman on Facing Fear and Finding the Divine In an interview with Berklee President Jim Lucchese, the Oscar-winning composer reflects on how courage and...
20/10/2025
Monday 20 October 2025
To view this content, please enable our use of cookies. ...
20/10/2025
Rohde & Schwarz transfers Pixel Power to Imagine Communications Companies work collaboratively to ensure continuity and ongoing support for existing customers...
20/10/2025
RT 's Prime Time is set to host the final Presidential Election Debate this Tuesday night, October 21, providing an opportunity to hear directly from Irelan...
20/10/2025
NVIDIA and Google Cloud are expanding access to accelerated computing to transform the full spectrum of enterprise workloads, from visual computing to agentic a...
19/10/2025
Back to All News
Sins of Kujo' Comes to Life in New Live-Action Series Set for Spring 2026
Entertainment
19 October 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to cl...
18/10/2025
New England Sports Network (NESN) has chosen Harmonic, working with Astound Business Solutions, as its enterprise technology partner to transform primary distri...
18/10/2025
NEW ORLEANS, La. In the run-up to the start of the NBA season, WVUE-TV and Gray Local Media have announced a deal with DirecTV that will greatly expand access t...
18/10/2025
Berklee Celebrates 40 Years of the Fall Together Concert Faculty composers Bob Pilkington and Greg Hopkins are among the featured artists for this year's ...
17/10/2025
NEP Group Receives New Equity Investment From 26North Partners LP, Co-InvestorsCarlyle remains the largest shareholder as the company prepares for the futureBy ...
17/10/2025
Apple Lands Five-Year Deal for F1 Distribution in the U.S.Besides airing on Apple TV, the sport will be amplified on other Apple servicesBy Ken Kerschbaumer, Ed...
17/10/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Marshall Electronics' Bernie Keach on the Future of PTZ Camera...
17/10/2025
L2 Productions' REMI Facility in Austin Can Produce Content From AnywhereMusic festivals, sports events are produced via flypacks and remote control roomsBy...
17/10/2025
By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival...
17/10/2025
(L-R) Christopher Meyer, Addison Timlin, Cooper Raiff, Lili Reinhart, Alyah Chan...
17/10/2025
M sica e arte se uniram em uma noite especial na semana passada na ZIV Gallery, ...
17/10/2025
Music and art came together for one special night last week at ZIV Gallery, an i...
17/10/2025
Spotify and FC Barcelona are extending our partnership through 2030, continuing a collaboration that's redefining how fans, players, and artists connect. Th...
17/10/2025
MURRIETA, Calif. The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC) has deployed DigitalGlue's creative.space storage platform to streamline video production by centrali...
17/10/2025
BELLEVUE, Wash. Football continued to cement its reputation as a bulwark of TV advertising in Q3 2025 with new data from iSpot that showed both the NFL and coll...
17/10/2025
The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC), the premier competitive saltwater fishing series, has transformed its production workflow by adopting creative.space, the...
17/10/2025
QuickLink, a leading provider of award-winning multi-camera video productions and remote contribution solutions, announces the release of StudioPro Version 4, ...
17/10/2025
Although the annual Grammy Awards celebration is best known for recognizing achievements in the recording industry, the show often proves a visual spectacle as ...
17/10/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leading provider of software-defined data storage and data services, has promoted Alex Dunfey to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) from his for...
17/10/2025
The University of Arizona (UofA) has significantly upgraded its broadcast communication infrastructure with the integration of Riedel Communications' advanc...
17/10/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that New England Sports Network (NESN), owned by Fenway Sports Group and Delaware North, has selected Harmonic as its en...
17/10/2025
Austin PBS has recently upgraded its facility-wide communications infrastructure, deploying Clear-Com 's Eclipse HX, FreeSpeak II beltpacks, and V-Series ...
17/10/2025
ZEISS announces an open call for the closed BETA testing phase of CinCraft Virtual Lens Technology, the innovative digital tool that brings authentic lens chara...
17/10/2025
Situated in the town of Kokkola, Centria University of Applied Sciences offers higher education across five core fields: engineering, business, social and healt...
17/10/2025
Public information channel in Georgia, USA, to implement a powerful, simple, and cost-effective playout automation platform.
Pebble, the leading automation, co...
17/10/2025
HBO Max is reporting that it has launched in 15 new markets, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Macau, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Ukraine, boosting the streaming serv...
17/10/2025
Netflix said it will make a major push into video podcasts, inking a wide-ranging deal with Spotify through which it will offer 16 podcasts in the U.S. starting...
17/10/2025
Lexington, Ky. As part of a push to highlight its advanced advertising capabilities, Viamedia has launched a new AI-powered ad tech platform and officially rebr...
17/10/2025
NEW YORK QuickLink has announced the release of StudioPro Version 4, which the company is calling the most significant upgrade yet to its flagship video product...
17/10/2025
NEW YORK and CUPERTINO, Calif. Apple and NBCUniversal said they will sell Apple TV and Peacock streaming bundles to U.S. subscribers starting Oct. 20....
ALEXANDRIA, VA. Doug Lung has a long history in the television industry as an engineer and writer. He has worked for NBC and Telemundo since 1985, rising to his current position as the vice president of technology for NBC Stations western region.
