Colleagues are mourning broadcaster and engineer David Stewart, who died on June 30 at the age of 63.
The Texas Association of Broadcasters said Stewart owned and operated KPET, an AM station and FM translator in Lamesa, Texas. He also was part of the ownership of Falls Media FM stations KWFB and KXXN in Wichita Falls, and he operated Moving Target Consulting Works.
“The broadcast engineering community suffers a great loss,” fellow engineer and consultant David Bialik told RW. “He was a wealth of knowledge and a nice guy who always had time to answer a question or say hello.”
Stewart was honored in 2019 by the TAB with its George Marti Award for Engineering Excellence.
“Broadcast colleagues know David Stewart as the consummate engineer, starting ‘in the trenches,’ while still in high school in his hometown of Lubbock,” TAB wrote in a bio at the time.
“The Lubbock Public School System had a series of electronics courses taught by a teacher who moonlighted as a local radio engineer. The courses produced several well-trained broadcast engineers who to this day serve in technical and ownership positions at Texas radio and television stations.”
Stewart attended Texas Tech University. In 1985 he joined Tichenor Media System to work on station startups and restore operations to stations in Texas.
He worked for Tichenor for about 12 years; the company then was purchased by Heftel, then became part of Hispanic Broadcasting and then merged in 2003 with Univision Communications. Stewart was corporate engineer/director of engineering and VP of engineering for Hispanic Broadcasting and Univision Radio for 13 years.
“In that capacity, he oversaw more than 40 engineers from all over Texas. During his time at Univision, Stewart even helped relocate the FM plant at the Empire State Building in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks,” TAB wrote.
He also was involved in the state’s Emergency Alert System and worked with former TAB President Ann Arnold in creating the state plan and helping develop local plans.
Moving Target Consulting Works was founded in 2004 and specialized in upgrading AM and FM stations, particularly “family-owned, owner-operated and estate-owned signals.”
“The broadcast engineering community suffers a great loss,” engineer David Bialik told RW. “He was a wealth of knowledge and a nice guy who always had time to answer a question or say hello.”
