I’m Brian Gleason with Philips Digital Video Systems Company. I first became interested in broadcasting growing up in Independence, Missouri. (suburb of K.C.) In high school I took an RTV course from a dynamic instructor named Bob Lake, who had been in radio for many years. We produced programming for the community cable channel, and local radio. It was the early 70’s, and we had so much technology at our fingertips! I became hooked on the buttons, and the creative freedom we enjoyed in developing our ideas every week.

My father got an opportunity with a college in Iowa so we moved just before my senior year. It worked out great, as I was able to enter college early, and eventually found my way to the University of Iowa at Iowa City, majoring in Broadcasting and Film. It was a rich and diverse program, and I had a great teaching assistant in the television production class named Corey Carbonara, from Chicago. Little did we know that 20 years later, we would both end up in Texas.

Corey is now a P.h.D. and an associate VP for technology management with Baylor University in Waco. I’m a senior district manager with Philips, still working on my Masters degree!

I got into the sales side after school when I joined a friend in his new company selling professional audio gear in K.C. I had supplemented my income in college by playing keys and guitar in several cover bands, so I had some exposure to high end P.A. gear and recording. We eventually developed an in house recording studio and were the regional reps for companies such as Yamaha, JBL, Tascam, Soundcraft, AKG, and Crown. We were doing great, but I then got interested in video again after a trip to Texas, where I discovered a sales position with Industrial Audio/Video in Houston. The idea of working with the video side again appealed to me, and IA/V turned out to be the perfect fit.

I joined on with BTS as a regional rep in 1990 under Brian Hagen, whom I’d met when he was at Ampex. The company was a joint venture with Philips and Bosch, but about three years ago, we became a full division of Royal Dutch Philips, of Eindhoven, Netherlands. I truly consider myself fortunate to be representing a company with such technological vision, and a history of R&D development that is legendary. If you visited the Philips booth at NAB this year, you saw complete "glass to glass" solutions from the camera to digital signal processing, MPEG encoding and multiplexing, HD gear, and MPEG 4 streaming to the internet. Philips offers a truly limitless opportunity of equipment and ideas, and a company that is successfully positioning itself as the industry leader under the branding of "Let’s make things Better."

I cover Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and both the company and I agree that this is one of the best territories in the nation. I have enjoyed great success in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and New Orleans, but although I’ve had limited success in Houston, I’m challenged to bring more Philips products to this market!