Engel, Fred

Engel, Fred

Chief Technology Officer at PBS North Carolina

Fred Engel, CPBE, ATSC3, Chief Technology Officer at PBS North Carolina (formerly known as UNC-TV), is a widely respected leader in the broadcast media industry. He and his team are nationally recognized for work in developing creative applications for the new television broadcast technology developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) commonly referred to as ATSC 3.0/NEXT GEN TV.  These efforts include Public Safety Communications efforts that won the 2017 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Pilot Innovation Grant Competition for “Digital Paging over Public Broadcasting”, an effort now funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. Related to his ATSC 3.0/NEXT GEN TV efforts he now serves on the ATSC Board of Directors, the first public broadcaster in that role in many years.

He has been in the broadcast industry since graduating from Ferris State University in 1978. He spent 27 years at WTTW Chicago rising from an engineering maintenance technician to Vice President of Technology. He spent three years with a Systems Integration firm in Chicago as Vice President of Broadcasting, joined Kentucky Educational Television (KET) in 2010 as Senior Director of Technology and in 2016 took a similar role with UNC-TV in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Fred and his team in Chicago received a Midwest Emmy award for the design and construction of WTTW’s Digital Broadcast Operations Center. His team at KET designed and built one of the first street side studios in public broadcasting in downtown Louisville, KY.

He is a regular contributor at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Technology Conference, PBS Annual Meetings, the America’s Public Television Stations Summit and the NAB convention.  He has authored or co-authored multiple papers regarding ATSC 3.0.  In 2022 the PBS NC paper on public safety was selected as best paper at the IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting in Bilbao, Spain.  The paper was also presented at the 2022 NAB BEIT and was selected best paper there.

He is the current Chapter 93 chairperson of the Society of Broadcast Engineers in the Raleigh/Durham NC market and holds professional certifications with the Society including “Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer (CPBE)” and “ATSC3 Specialist”.  He has served on the FCC Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council VII (CSRIC) working group focused on improving Broadcast Resiliency, had a six-year tenure with the PBS Enterprise Technology Advisory Committee (ETAC), participates in various PBS ETAC Working Groups, and serves with the Advanced Warning and Alert Response Network (AWARN) and the NextGen Video Information Systems Alliance (NVISA) groups focusing on emergency notifications to viewers.

Sessions/Events
ATSC 3.0 and Public Broadcasting: A Case for Flash Cut
Saturday, April 15 11:30 AM - 11:50 AM PT