Don Borchert

Don Borchert
Inducted: 2006

His broadcast engineering career spanned six decades and began with fourteen years, starting in 1950, serving Lee Broadcasting stations in Minnesota, Iowa and WKTY radio in La Crosse. He spent four years with RCA Broadcast in Chicago before becoming Director of Engineering for WHA Radio & TV in Madison in 1968, a position he held for the next 25 years. During that time he was the chief engineering consultant for the construction of two significant broadcast facilities in Madison: Vilas Hall, the UW-Madison Communications and Broadcast Center, and the massive 1,423 foot candelabra-style tower shared by broadcasters in Madison. Beginning in 1975 and continuing for over 30 years he managed the Midwest Regional Broadcast Clinic, one of nation’s most respected engineering conferences under the auspices first of the UW-Extension and then in 1994 the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.