SPECIAL MEETING!! Next Tuesday, Sept. 6 — We will have our Fall Social Meeting from 5:30 to 7:30 PM, at the Edgewater. On the Pier, if the weather permits, or in the Rigadoon Room if necessary. Hors d'oevres and snack food provided by the Club, and a cash bar. LINDA BERGREN is the chairperson, so you know what to expect - social hour, recognition awards, some from the Club and some of the special ones (including the famous POTB Award) presented by the event boss. The object is to have a good time with friends, and maybe applaud a time or two. You should bring a guest - spouse, significant other, prospective member, friend. We'd like everyone to be there!

Last time - Pres. JIM SCHUTZ presided, LINDA BERGREN led the song, and SCOTT GROVER gave the invocation. Our only “guest” was RICK DALUGE, PP of the Madison West Club, PDG, and representative of the Wisconsin Lions Eye Bank. RICK is with us often - we should get him a badge!

CRAIG BUTLER spoke briefly about our Golf Outing, which, since the hurricane did not come here, went off on schedule. We don't have a report on it yet, but expect there'll be one shortly.

SCOTT GROVER reported that there is a Junior Ironman event scheduled here in Madison for Sept. 10. He needs 10 Lion volunteers to work on this event, which should help to make us visible in public. More to follow, presumably.

As the saying goes, “there being no further business”, MICHELLE VETTERKIND introduced our speaker, whom we have heard before. Leonard Charles, Director of Engineering for WISC-TV, Channel Three, a man who can make intricate technologies understandable to the masses, told us about the arguments going on, largely invisible to most of us, about the use of the available broadcast spectrum, through which we get, among other things, broadcast (local, over-the-air) television, radio, and a host of other things, mostly cellphones, “smart phones”, tablets, and also gadgets like cordless phones, wireless speakers, home computer wireless networks, etc. etc. It was just over a year ago that TV stations had to switch to “digital” broadcast signals, which usually meant broadcasting on a different frequency (“channel”) even though they still used their old numbers as identification. This made way for high-definition TV, but also reduced the number of frequencies used, requiring TV stations to get a lot of very expensive equipment (about $6 million per station.) Now, with the explosion in usage of cell phones and their evil progeny (editor's term) smart phones and tablets, the phone companies want more “spectrum” - more than 30% of what remains for TV. There are presently 4095 stations using the contested spectrum, which is roughly above Channel 30. They would have to re-equip, AGAIN!

High-definition TV can't be crowded - it takes considerable bandwidth for each station and requires some blank space in between- and most commercial stations now broadcast in hi-def. Interestingly, in Madison, Charter Communications picks up the local stations off-the-air and resends them by cable. The UHF band (higher frequencies) is best for mobile use (because low frequencies have a longer wave length and need big antennas) but also best for TV, because although VHF frequencies (lower freq.) travel farther they are more subject to interference, and hi-def signals won't tolerate interference. One reason the Federal Government required the switch to “digital” broadcasting is that you can get three times as many channels in the same bandwidth, which has actually caused over-the -air broadcasting to grow somewhat. In Wisconsin, the viewing audience is about 23% over the air, with the balance getting signal by some type of cable or satellite. If the available numbers of frequencies is further pinched, the high cost and technical difficulties could very possibly reduce the number of TV stations, with all of the difficulties that would cost. There is a lot more to all this than meets the eye.