Run and repair the gear that gets a radio or television signal out of the building and into people's homes.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$59,570
Small market start
$31,390
Top tenth
$123,670
The national median is $59,570 a year, but the bottom tenth earn about $31,390. That gap is mostly market size: a station in a town of 60,000 pays a fraction of what a network operation in New York or Los Angeles pays for the same skills.
$15 to $20 an hour
Board operator or master control operator at a local station
Almost everyone starts somewhere small, works nights and weekends, and moves to a bigger city after two or three years. Nobody starts in a top market.
$90,000 to $130,000
Chief engineers, transmitter engineers, network and live sports crews
The money is in being the person who can fix it, not the person who pushes the button. Engineers who understand both radio frequency transmission and computer networking are genuinely hard to find.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a one year community college broadcasting or electronics certificate at in state tuition, which a Pell Grant can cut to almost nothing. The high end is a four year degree in broadcast or media technology at an in state public university. Certification exams are only a few hundred dollars a level and many stations pay for them. This is a field where a cheap two year program plus real hours at a station beats an expensive degree with none, so file the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and keep the borrowing small.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) before you enroll. This is a field where a cheap two year program plus real station hours beats an expensive degree with none.
Health insurance and retirement matching
Standard at station groups and networks, thinner at very small stations.
Overtime and call-out pay
Transmitters fail at 3am, and you get paid to go fix them.
Travel on live events
Sports and concert crews travel, with hotels and meals covered.
Employer paid certification
Many stations cover the Society of Broadcast Engineers exam fees.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Short schooling, then hours in a real control room. Experience is the credential here.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Physics, electronics, computer courses. Join the school broadcast club or help run the sound at events.
Certificate or associate degree
1 to 4 years
Broadcast technology, electronics or audio engineering at a community college. A four year media technology degree also works and is not required.
Work at a college or community station
During school
The fastest way to get real hours. Several journalism schools run full commercial stations staffed by students.
First job in a small market
2 to 3 years
Master control, board operating, or an assistant engineer role. Nights and weekends to start.
Certification and a bigger market
Ongoing
Add Society of Broadcast Engineers certifications, learn transmitters and networking, and move up market or into engineering.
Physics
Signals, antennas and power are physics.
Electronics or shop
Soldering and reading a schematic are daily skills.
Computer science and networking
Modern television plants are computer networks that happen to carry video.
Music or audio production
A trained ear is worth a lot in this job.
The Federal Communications Commission licenses the station, not the person at the console. It dropped the requirement for operators to hold a federal permit decades ago, so today nothing legally stops you from running station equipment. What employers look at instead is the voluntary certification ladder from the Society of Broadcast Engineers, which runs from entry level radio and television operator certificates up to senior and professional broadcast engineer.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Computer networking
Video now travels over internet protocol networks. This is the biggest skills gap in the industry.
Radio frequency and transmitters
Fewer and fewer people can maintain a high power transmitter, and stations pay for the ones who can.
Live sports and remote trucks
Travel heavy, high pressure and well paid.
Streaming and encoding
Every station is now also a streaming operation.
Amateur radio license
A cheap entry exam, and a long-standing signal to broadcast engineers that you actually understand radio.
Driver's license
Transmitter sites are on hilltops and remote trucks need drivers.
Comfort with heights
Tower work is a specialty, and even basic antenna checks mean climbing.
A soldering iron and curiosity
People who fix things at home get hired over people who only studied it.
The same skills run corporate video studios, university lecture capture, houses of worship with large production setups, sports venues, streaming companies and live event production. Many people leave broadcast for those because the hours are better and the pay is higher, and a station job is a well-respected way into all of them.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Come in before the newscast and check that everything routes: cameras, microphones, graphics, satellite feeds. During the show you are in master control watching levels and switching feeds, with a producer in your ear. When something fails you have seconds, not minutes. Between shows you patch cables, update software, drive out to the transmitter, and log what you did. Overnight and weekend shifts are normal early on.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A modern station routes video as data over network switches rather than through banks of dedicated video hardware. That is why job postings for broadcast engineers read half like information technology postings.
To cover a whole city, the antenna needs height. Engineers regularly drive up unpaved mountain roads in winter to restart a transmitter that a lightning strike knocked off the air.
The Missouri School of Journalism operates a commercial television station and a public radio station staffed by students, so undergraduates work live shifts on air years before they graduate.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.