New York Tower Alliance Taps Saul Shapiro as New Chief

Replaces Paul Bissonette at Metropolitan Television Alliance

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/24/2008 12:05:00 PM

The Metropolitan Television Alliance (MTVA), a consortium of 11 New York stations organized to create a long-term solution for digital-television broadcasts in the New York market, named former Federal Communications Commission staffer and ABC engineering executive Saul Shapiro as its new president.

Shapiro replaces Paul Bissonette, a former WPIX general manager who had headed the MTVA since 2004 and announced that he was stepping down in February.

Shapiro will be tasked with both creating an interim solution to improve DTV coverage when analog broadcasts cease next February and with developing a long-term home for high-powered DTV transmission.

The state of broadcast transmissions in New York has been in flux since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, destroyed the World Trade Center, site of many stations’ transmitters and antennas. Since then, a number of stations have found a home on the Empire State Building, where CBS had already created a DTV-transmission site, and on Four Times Square. But due to both their lower height and limitations on the power that can be transmitted, neither of these sites can deliver the level of coverage previously afforded by the WTC.

The MTVA’s long-term plan is to build a large master antenna atop the Freedom Tower at the old WTC site, which is due for completion in 2012. To address the stations’ short-term problem -- that there will be inadequate DTV coverage between Feb. 17, 2009, when analog signals cease, and whenever the Freedom Tower’s antenna is operational -- the MTVA has been considering distributed transmission technology such as single-frequency networks, which use a network of multiple lower-powered transmitters all broadcasting the same channel.

“Serving the MTVA member stations and the viewers in the New York metropolitan area is the challenge of a lifetime, and I am eager to get started,” Shapiro said in a statement. “With the support of the general managers of the member stations, I am confident that we can succeed in providing the highest-quality transmission in the media capital of the world.”

Shapiro is a former vice president of business development for the New York City Economic Development Corp., overseeing advertising, media, technology and green sectors, and a former VP of broadcast technology for ABC Broadcast Operations & Technology.

At the FCC, he was an assistant bureau chief in the Mass Media Bureau and was involved in developing DTV rules and policy.

A graduate of Brown University, Shapiro holds a master’s of business administration and a master’s of science degree in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Saul Shapiro brings a wealth of experience and insight to the MTVA’s critical mission of providing the best-quality broadcast signal to viewers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut,” said MTVA chair Frank Comerford, president and GM of WNBC, in a statement. “Saul understands the complexity of the problem and has the temperament and background to deal with it.”