Paul Sakrison is the Chief Engineer and AM Engineering Manager for CBS Radio's KNX 1070 Newsradio and KFWB News 980 in Los Angeles. Both are 24/7 news stations. KNX is a 50,000-watt clear channel station which is heard all over the western United States at night and as far away as Sweden, Norway and Austrailia. KFWB is a fulltime 5,000-watt non-directional station. They are part of the CBS Radio portfolio of premier radio stations across the country. Paul has recently completed work on a $10 million project to move KNX, KFWB and 3 FM stations into a new state-of-the-art digital plant on LA's Miracle Mile at 5670 Wilshire Blvd.


CBS Radio AM Master Control

Paul first got involved in broadcasting at the age of 13 by setting up a small studio in his bedroom and sending music and announcements by telephone hookup to friends' houses. This progressed in High School to sending music and recorded comedy bits using an amplified FM Wireless Mike transmitter and a directional antenna. This stopped when the FCC moved into an office building near his home.

In his senior year of High School, Paul started an Internship at KNAC-FM in his hometown of Long Beach, CA, under the mentorship of Program Director Ron McCoy and Chief Engineer Ace Simpson. While attending Cal State Long Beach and for some time thereafter, Paul was Student Engineer under Chief George Murray and also had various on-air shifts at FM KSUL using the name Paul Henry.

After college, Paul started as Production Manager and became Station Engineer at KROQ AM/FM. This was during KROQ-FM's transition from "free-form" to the more disciplined "Roq of The 80's" programming, instrumented by the legendary Rick Carroll.

CBS Radio AM Master Control
After that, Paul moved to KIK-FM in Orange County, CA as Chief Engineer. He worked his way to Senior Vice-President of Operations and Engineering over his 18-year tenure at the Astor Broadcast Group. During this time stations were added to his responsibility in the Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego markets. Paul engineered upgrades to several of the stations in congested markets where upgrading is nearly impossible. For a year and a half, Paul went part-time with ABG to serve as Technical Director for Anaheim Broadcasting's KEZY AM/FM during the construction of its new $1,000,000 5-tower 10,000-watt AM Transmitter Site at the 57 Freeway at Tonner Canyon in Brea, CA. On clear nights, these towers can be seen from almost anywhere in Orange County.

During his time with ABG, Paul also started up Broadcast Engineering Services, now known as Radio Services Group. This is a small company that provides technical and other services to broadcasters from equipment repair to research projects to games for TV Game Shows. Clients have included Virtual Memory (TBN), KPLS, KBRT, KNOB, KYMS, KNAC and others. The name was changed in 1993 when Paul entered into partnership with Michael Duffy when they received an engineering contract with KPLS in Orange, CA. Michael would go on to costar in the movie The Omega Code. Radio Services Group is currently still in operation.

After ABG, Paul went to the Trinity Broadcasting Network, a religious TV network that broadcasts all over the world on over 1,000 stations and 17 satellites. He split his time between Assistant Information Technology Manager and Broadcast Engineer. He helped build new studios and offices at their new World Headquarters location in Costa Mesa, CA, wiring the studios for high-quality broadcasting and the offices for an extensive computer and telephone network. As Webmaster, he also expanded the network's website, tbn.org, and created a website for their theatrical motion picture, The Omega Code, starring Michael York and Casper Van Dien. That movie was the top revenue per screen movie in theaters the week it opened.


CBS Radio AM Master Control
Next Paul moved to eBuilt, Inc., in Irvine, CA, inauguration the position of Digital Media Manager. eBuilt builds large-scale Web Applications for Global 1000 corporations such as Sony, Hitachi, Seagate, American Capital Group and many others. When he went to eBuilt, Internet Video was becoming the hot item for the near future. Paul designed a web-based video production and archival system that would allow relative novices to produce videos of corporate meetings, training sessions and communications and have them automatically store themselves properly for distribution and add themselves to the corporate website video library menu.

Paul returned to radio fulltime in 2002, joining CBS Radio's KFWB News 980 in Los Angeles. The first order of business was to build studios and facilities to flagship the Los Angeles Dodgers Radio Network. KFWB has the radio broadcast rights for the Dodgers for 5 years. Two years later Paul was asked to add Chief Engineer responsibilities at KNX 1070 Newsradio. This is the big CBS Radio News West Coast flagship. Shortly thereafter planning began to move both KFWB and KNX to new facilities. The original location was to be CBS' Studio Center (aka Radford) in the San Fernando Valley integrated with the move of KCBS-TV (Ch 2) and KCAL-TV (Ch 9) to the same facility. When the timing of that didn't work out, a new location was secured, this time at 5670 Wilshire Blvd, on LA's Miracle Mile. After working many 14 hour per day 7 day weeks, the last station, KNX, went on the air from the new facility on August 12, 2005. KNX and KFWB have expanded their reach by adding Internet Streaming, HD Radio broadcasting and Podcasting. KNX and KFWB are on the leading edge of technology today through strategic capital projects and forward-looking planning and design.