Dennis Wallace is the managing partner of the broadcast engineering and technical consulting firm of Meintel, Sgrignoli, & Wallace, LLC.  He has managed the firm’s projects and operations since its founding in 2004. Under Dennis’ leadership the firm has completed hundreds of projects for clients ranging from broadcast transmission facility design and construction, coverage and service field-testing and interference assessments, extensive work on research and development lab testing projects, as well as numerous regulatory and policy matters. MSW has built a reputation as the firm to call for complex and difficult projects. 

Dennis has spent much of his career at the intersection of business, technical and regulatory issues working with various organizations in the industry on the development and deployment of new technologies to move broadcasters forward in their transition to digital. He has helped to grow the industry while preserving and protecting Broadcaster’s spectrum.  

Dennis began his career in Broadcasting in 1985, at the age of 16, at his high school’s radio station, WBDG, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He started as an on-air talent but quickly realized that he was more interested in the technical and engineering aspects of broadcasting. While at WBDG, he worked with the station’s contract engineer, Jack Tiller of Bulter University, and gained valuable experience and knowledge of broadcast engineering. It was at this time, Dennis first joined the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) as a student member. As a student member Dennis attended SBE Chapter 25 meetings and developed relationships with local engineers that mentored him. He was honored as the Station Staff Member of the year in 1987 by WBDG.   

Dennis has always had entrepreneurial interests. While in high school he won the Office Education Association’s (OEA) National Entrepreneurship Competition which included winning a scholarship for secondary education.  Dennis utilized this scholarship to study Electronic Engineering Technology. These studies formed the basis of his long electronic engineering career. But he has always kept his entrepreneurial interest and spirit as demonstrated by the many varied businesses he has been involved with over the years.  

After high school, Dennis served as the Chief Engineer for two radio stations in Anderson, Indiana, designing and constructing new studios to consolidate operations of the two formerly stand-alone stations into one facility.  

Subsequent to his radio position, Dennis was hired as the Chief Engineer to build and construct a new UHF television station serving the Indianapolis market.  This station, WIIB, was the very first installation of a common-amplification Klystrode (IOT) transmitter. In time, this new energy-efficient TV amplifier technology was widely adopted by the industry as the “standard” tube-type amplifier for both analog and digital transmitters. The development team for this product was awarded a Technical Emmy for the development of this transmitter technology.  

Dennis was then offered a position with Thomson CSF (Comark Communications) to support their IOT transmitters in the field and traveled extensively over the next few years servicing and building television transmitter facilities for stations around the world. While there he was part of the Advanced Television Research Consortium’s (ATRC) team that built a demonstration station in Washington, DC, of their proposed HDTV system. This involvement in the early days of HDTV development would prove to be the beginning of his extensive experience in the development and launching of new technologies for broadcasting.   

Dennis then took a position with what would become the LARCAN division of LeBlanc & Royle Telecom working on transmitter product design, facility design and construction, tall tower projects, as well as technical support for the company’s many broadcast and tower projects around the world.  

In 1994, he took a leave of absence from LARCAN to work at the Advanced Television Test Center (ATTC) as the RF System Engineer where he was responsible for all the Radio Frequency (RF) Testing of the Grand Alliance system that would become the ATSC 1.0 system we utilize today. It was while at ATTC that Dennis worked with many of the industry’s leaders as well as organizations such as the FCC, ACATS, MSTV, NAB, and the ATSC on various technical and policy challenges facing stations as they transitioned to digital television. The ATTC team was awarded a Technical Emmy in 2007 for this pioneering work on the development of the ATSC digital system.  

This extensive experience with all the technical and policy aspects of the new digital television system would form the basis of the next chapter of his career in broadcasting. In 1997, Dennis formed his own consulting firm of Wallace & Associates which was retained by the Model Station Project in Washington, DC, to construct the transmitter facilities for the Model Station Project as well as to conduct extensive field strength and service measurements of the new Digital Television signals.   

In addition, he made extensive field measurements for many experimental HDTV stations around the country including for WETA in Washington, DC,  KING and KOMO in Seattle, Washington, as well as WFAA in Dallas, Texas, some of the very first stations put on the air. Dennis has now conducted well over 8,000 field measurements on various radio and television systems and stations around the world.  

Many of these early projects involved Dennis working with Gary Sgrignoli, with Zenith Electronics, as well as Bill Meintel, with TechWare Inc. on various spectrum and reception issues. Working together on those early projects formed the basis of a partnership that would become the consulting engineering firm Meintel, Sgrignoli, and Wallace (MSW). Bill, Gary, and Dennis have all authored many articles and presented numerous white papers to various conferences, presented educational seminars and workshops on digital television topics, authored FCC filings, as well as having served on various industry committees and task forces.  

Dennis participated extensively in the ATSC committees working on the development of ATSC 3.0 and in particular was a contributor to the S32 committee on behalf of Pearl.  

In 2016, MSW conducted extensive spectrum computability lab testing of ATSC 3.0 signals into ATSC 1.0 transmissions that provided the technical basis of the Joint Petition to the FCC to allow permissive use of ATSC 3.0 operation in the existing TV bands. 

More recently, Dennis has been extensively involved in the development and testing of ATSC 3 / NextGenTV. Dennis and the MSW team built and operated the Cleveland Test station for NAB and CTA enabling the first full power field testing of the technology as well as providing a test bed for receiver and equipment development as well as numerous plug-fest events.  

Dennis was also instrumental in the development of the Phoenix Model Market station for Pearl and provided field testing of a NextGenTV (ATSC 3.0) Single Frequency Network system in Phoenix. This work provided early answers to implementation questions and performance of the new system especially with regard to SFN deployments.  

Also, for Pearl and NAB, Dennis recently conducted field tests to compare VHF and UHF NextGenTV signals in both outdoor and indoor environments to characterize the performance of the system in different frequency bands providing much needed data regarding the performance of the system on VHF channels.  

Dennis has served in many positions in the industry including on the Board of Directors and as the Chairman of the National Frequency Coordination Committee of the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE). He has served as Secretary on the IEEE-BTS Ad-Com, as well as working on the committees of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and the National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC). He is an Associate member of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE) and the Federal Communications Bar Association (FCBA).  

In 1999, Mr. Wallace was awarded the prestigious Matti S. Siukola award by the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society. In 2007, he was awarded a Technical Emmy plaque for his contributions and work on the development of Digital Television as part of the ATTC team. And, in 2017 Mr. Wallace was awarded the Industry Innovator Award by TV Technology Magazine.  

As noted earlier, Dennis continues his entrepreneurial endeavors including previously building and operating both radio and television stations until selling those businesses in 2018.  He continues to be one of the owners of DTV Notifications providing MVPD and Medical notifications for stations that are making RF facility changes. And, more recently, he acquired an electrical contracting business in Las Vegas, Nevada, serving the communications infrastructure and medical facilities sectors utilizing his background in mission critical facility design and construction to serve Southern Nevada.  

When he’s not working on a project, he enjoys traveling and has visited almost 40 Countries as well as all 50 US States and most of the US Territories. He has logged almost 3 million airline flight miles to various destinations and thousands of hotel nights between business and leisure travel.