Everybody Welcome back to Broadway v today I am your host, Ben Thomas. You know, one of the things that I love to do on this show is spotlight people, organizations, industries maybe that don't quite always get the credit that they deserve. And this episode is one of those episodes, right, where we're talking about obstruction. Why do you think that that's relevant in a pro movie community and a broadcast community? That's what we're going to find out today. So I brought on somebody who's much smarter than me. That's Jim Jacoby, president over at CWA lighting. Jim, Thanks so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it. Thanks for the time. Ben well, look, Jim, you and I initially met through the Nab community and I was transparently a little bit surprised to see somebody like you guys being a part of that community because, you know, normally when you think obstruction, lighting, maybe it's just on top of buildings, those random light bulbs on top of cell towers. But there's actually a massive impact that you guys have on not only the broadcast, but telecom industry and the infrastructure industry as a whole. You know, so why would you say structure lighting is so important to our industries right now? Yeah because I think if you think about it in depth, any industry that's transmitting ver, you know, using towers, you know, through a signal, whether it's broadcast telecommunication or any, any structure that's over, say 200 feet in the air, they're all required to provide some type of visual display to inbound header aircraft that, you know, that there's an obstruction in their way and that's the way they alert them. So your options are really to paint it to a certain color and certainly don't want to paint buildings that color or you can light them up. And if you know, and if you choose to paint, you've got a maintenance issue, you've got a high cost issue and a repetitive issue of having to do that versus, you know, the way they started out by putting lights up there to actually provide that visual, you know, notification to someone that, hey, there's something impeding my, by the way, through there and I need to avoid it. Well, look, it seems pretty practical in principle. And honestly, I love that. But one of the questions that at least came to my mind as soon as I kind of had a chance to meet you guys, was, you know, what is the buying cycle look like, right? Who owns the towers? Who's responsible for the compliance and the maintenance of all that? What is the normal buying channel and the buying cycle look like for obstruction lighting? Yeah so from a compliance standpoint, anyone who owns it or is putting it up for, let's say, installing it. Right, they've got a compliance to the FAA and the FAA has strict requirements that we can get into if you want. But, you know, they start with any structure over charter fee ask to be led to a certain amount. It has to have a, you know, a light spread of x amount. It has to have a being capacity in terms of how far it goes out by X amount and all that's predicated based on the height of the, of the system it's being installed on. Right so then in terms of ownership, you know, when I first joined the organization, I kind of thought, well, AT&T or Verizon has got to be our largest customer, right? Because they're the ones who have all these cell towers out there. But in reality, they own a small percentage of their own towers. Right probably less than 10% of the towers that they're employing. And in reality, the telecommunication industry, there is a separate community of tower owners who are on those towers and allow other broadcasters, whether it's a broadcast tower for ABC or whether it's, you know, for an at&t, you know, telecommunication tower to be on their tower and broadcasting it, renting through the tower that they own, the tower that they maintain, and everything else that goes with it. Well, look in it. If you know your city is anything like us here in Dallas. These towers are popping up all the time. Right and a lot of that is the demand for 5G coverage, cellular connectivity, not only in major Metropolitan areas, but also rural applications as well. You know, from you talked about an ownership, the conversation there, you know, what's the most important thing to think about as somebody is, you know, building and buying some of this land. How early in that process does obstruction lightning actually come into play? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So if you think about wind turbines, right. So they putting those wind turbines out in farm area, right. So initially the FAA was saying, well, you only need to have x capacity of those wind turbines covered in light. So it's usually around 60% to 80% But as they get closer to areas of a population as well as airports, well, now you need to have more of those units lit because at that point you've got lower flying aircraft versus, you know, planes that are up at 30,000 feet that really don't need to be worried about something that's, you know, 700 or 800 feet off the ground. So as you get closer to population or in our case, as population expands, right. They add more people, they add more density of airports to cover those people. And that then requires, you know, the lighting aspect to come into play. Well, look, I think a lot of times people just associate with the really tall, red blinking light as being really maybe the only type of obstruction lighting. Right that's relevant. But, you know, we had a chance to talk a little bit before the show. There are so many different types, right. Whether it's strobe, whether it's that the normal red blinking light. But what are some of the technological advancements that you're seeing right now in the industry? Yeah so when did RCR started? I mean, they came out with an incandescent bulb, right? So they had something that probably needed to be changed periodically throughout the year. It wasn't something that lasted very long and it didn't put out much of a display and then went to, you know, the xenon strobe. They changed to that which which had a stronger in terms of density of light stream. It also, you know, had less maintenance and now you're into the LED lights. So technology on the lighting side has changed. You know, you're talking over 40 years, it's changed a little bit and gotten a lot better to wear. Now we've got light systems that are out there that could probably last anywhere from 15 to 18 years. You don't have to change anything in as long as you know, you you built them correctly. You have allowed moisture in anything that to not see bend to the circuit boards. So at that point, the system should be usable for that 15 to 20 year period. Right so now we're seeing technology change in another aspect, which is, you know, that the demand for data, right? So instead of just having a red light or a white light or a dual light, what else can that light system do for us? That's up on the top of the tower. And it transmit data. Can it report back in terms of what it's doing in terms of operating or having its system failures, or is it a GPS tied to it? Or do we have a radar system in it? You know, in the future, I could see these systems actually reporting out, you know, wind and as well as, you know, whether some are the aircraft themselves to give them immediate alerts of what they're seeing or experiencing at those levels, similar to what, you know, the FAA is doing now when the pilots call in and ask about it. But these are reports that could be just being, you know, pulsate it out through the system itself. Well, I love that you bring that up, too, right. Because I think a lot of times people will just associate the light being its own thing. Right but when you start talking about being able to analyze weather patterns and wind speeds, obviously that has application for the, you know, the airplanes in the airport traffic side of it. But that's also important for the broadcaster, the telecom company, to know as well. Right you know, because in different weather patterns, your signal is going to travel different lengths and distances, things like that. Are you seeing broadcasters and telecom companies adopt technologies like that through the lighting fixtures? I think it's something that's coming about. What we're seeing now is that there are tying in, you know, certain companies that provide those heavy duty radar stations that are also provide that feedback. But we're working with companies now to figure out a way to integrate both within hours and have a smaller system that can actually provide that localized information, let's call it was in that area of words up right now. Do they need wanted in a wind farm? Would they need one at every one of those turbines? Of course not. A tower that is the telecommunications, our broadcast tower. There's only one of them in the set area, you know, span. So at that point, they probably need one in each one of those that go up. Well, Jim, look, I talked about us meeting initially through the Arab community. You guys will be out at the Nab this year. You know, what's your message to the community and maybe what's up? What are some of the things you guys are looking to show on? Yeah, so we're really excited to be due to attend Nab. I'll actually be there. We're launching what we call a high intensity system is our North Star. So right now we, we provide medium range lights, which would probably be for anything in the 200 to 700 foot height. When you think about your broadcast towers, those are the ones that are running 700 feet in a bog. And in those, say, the FAA requires what they call a high density lighting system. These are much more. There's a lot more that goes into those in terms of the light span and how far they have to get out there, because obviously they're higher up in the highways. So at that point, you know, they have a better chance of being obstruction to inbound aircraft. So we're getting excited that we're going to have a prototype ready to launch at the site. And we'll be displaying it at the show. It will be the finished version. Obviously, we've got a lot of work to do and we hope to have everything ready by the end of the year. But we're excited that we're at least going to have something initially to show out to the broadcast media. Well, Jim, it's funny you bring up, you know, the FAA. This is maybe one of the few times that the FAA and the FCC find a way to kind of work together. But last question here. You know, what are some of the things on the horizon for the industry maybe the next five, 10 years you're most excited about? Probably the most excited about would be, you know, that I think that when these lights are going to become what right where I mentioned earlier. Right they're going to be smarter in what they do and what they provide. They're going to continue to advance. I don't know if we'll see a lot more advancements, you know, from the LED in terms of the capability of the light. I just think that the system itself will get it more advanced in terms of the information it can report out in the data that it can collect and provide. So whether it's a local or national community in terms of what it's transmitting. So I see the technology of the light itself improving in that aspect. And the companies that are willing to embrace that and work on it are the ones that are really going to meet that demand when it comes about. You know, I mean, you look at 5G right now and everyone's talking about it, but there's very little 5G out there, right? So I think 4G is probably going to be around for at least another 10 years. And then as 5G demand increases as well as the costs come down for those 5G modems, I think that's when you start to see that transition. I think the data communication in the lighting system itself will follow that same pattern. You know, it may not be next year, but I think, you know, when you're looking three to five years out, you'll start to see a lot of this technology embedding itself in the light itself. Well, Jim, look, we're excited to see the future of the technology. And I appreciate you coming on the show today because transparently I had a lot of questions and was really fired up to learn a lot more, not only about the work that you guys are doing, but really the industry as a whole, because it's one of the places that those of us who are more inclined on the technological and maybe the button pushing side really don't get to interact with much. I appreciate you coming on today and teaching us a little bit more about the connectivity side of the broadcast world. Now, I certainly appreciate your time. I mean, it's a very interesting industry, something I didn't know a lot about before I joined. But what every day is, is a learning curve for me in terms of what they do and the services that we provide. Is it really interesting? Well, Jim, we appreciate you coming on. Jim Jacoby, president of ewr lighting, doing really doing some great stuff in the industry. Look forward to seeing you added in a B this year and making some connections that looking forward to it as well. We'll see you there. We appreciate you guys tuning in as well. If you have a topic that you'd like us to cover that you might not know as much about. We always love suggestions, so if there's anything you'd like to send over, you can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. Send me an email at Ben dot Thomas of market scale will make sure to cover it. But we appreciate you. Tune in next time.
