WBTW engineers get transmitter ready for digital television switch

Friday night will bring a big change to the tiny WBTW transmitter building in a remote area of Dillon County.

Since 1980, WBTW has transmitted from atop the 2,000-foot tower to an area that ranges from Fayetteville to the north, Georgetown to the south, Bishopville to the west, and Shallotte to the east.

When former engineer Bernie Moore flips off the analog transmitter switch late Friday night, and the WBTW engineers scramble to get the new digital transmitter online, it will mean the first time the roaring generators and fans of the transmitter building will be silent.

“It’s going to get pretty quiet in here,“ said Chief Engineer Doug Carter. “We’ve actually rehearsed the phases we go through step-by-step, so that our downtime is very, very minimal.“

Carter explains that analog television broadcasting has been around since 1939, and the World’s Fair.

“(Digital broadcasting) is a much cleaner picture than the old analog signal, which is basically an AM radio signal,“ Carter said. “Remember AM radios? When you were riding down the road, power lines would make them pop and band and scream at you? You don’t have that with digital. It’s a new technology,“ he said.
But there are more advantages to the big switch than just a clearer picture.

“We will come up with a greater coverage are, in digital, and the good part about it is, we’re going to do it green,“ said Carter. “We’ll be consuming 60% less electricity than we have all these years to produce the coverage area that we have. It’s a very large coverage area,“ he said.