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Career Advice on How to Become an Audio and Video Equipment Technician

General Career Information

Do you like to wear “wife-beaters” and various food stained t-shirts? Well, then you might mistakenly believe that your employment options are limited to working in a pawnshop or convenient store, but this just isn’t the case. Besides those careers come with way too much interaction with the public. That fact is something you want to consider when embarking on a job search or while career planning! 
 
There is another option- the exciting and fast-paced world of the audio and video equipment technician. If you hate learning lots of information, but like feeling superior to people, then its tough to do better than the audio and video equipment technician. This brotherhood of often depressed and anti-social curmudgeons takes great joy in the fact that most people don’t know how obscure and mostly irrelevant pieces of technology operate. When you embark upon this career, you can laugh at these people behind their backs.
 

Career Facts:

As an audio and video equipment technician, it falls upon your wide, but capable, shoulders to make sure civilization doesn’t collapse. You are the one that sets up a variety of electronic equipment that is to be used in everything from a television show, to a radio program, to a movie screening. Without you, it would stop; it would all just stop. 
 

Broadcast technicians are the ones responsible for making sure that television and radio broadcasts are in fine working order. To this end, audio and video equipment technicians work with all the important technical gear used in a television or radio broadcast.

 

Career Opportunities and Job Outlook-Excellent:

This is a growth industry. In 2006, there were 50,000 audio and video equipment technicians, but by 2016 this number is expected to climb to a 62,000 or a twenty-four percent increase.
 
Job Outlook is Excellent
 

A Day in The Life:

Most days are spent in a broadcast studio, or on occasion, a remote studio van or trailer. Normally, the work environment is temperature controlled, due to all the equipment. Technicians can either spend their day setting up new equipment or working with existing audio or video equipment to make sure shows make it onto the airwaves. More than likely, an aware and alert audio and video equipment technician will find at least one opportunity to talk down to people who know nothing of his obscure world during the day. (And yes, it is usually a he, but that is changing.)
 

Average Salary:

The average salary for an audio and video equipment technician is about $35,000, with the top ten-percent earning about $62,000. Since a college degree is not required for the job and the field is growing fast, the job of audio and video equipment technician is a good fit for those who want to bypass college.

$35k - $62k

 

Career Training and Qualifications:

About one-third of technicians are employed in the broadcast industry, with about seventeen percent employed in the motion picture, video and sound recording industry. Training often takes place in community colleges and technical schools, where would be technicians can receive associate’s degrees.
 
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