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RYAN SALAZAR – A Bio     

Currently the Director of Engineering and Post Production Technology, Ryan Salazar is a seasoned industry professional with over two decades of experience in the broadcast, post production and information technology fields.

Although prominent in his position now, Salazar began teaching himself the craft when he was a teenager in a rag-tag home studio. In his early years, he founded, produced, directed and was the director of engineering of "Teen Talk,” a television program that featured celebrities such as the Miss America (of the time), Ted Nugent, Rockapella and MTV Personalities.     

In 1993, Peabody Award-winning Channel One News, the top source of high quality, unbiased news and information for young people now delivered daily to nearly six million teens in approximately 8,000 middle schools and high schools across the country, chose Salazar as one of thirteen young people out of over 3,000 hopefuls to help provide global and national headlines from a teen perspective.   

From there, his humble beginnings were fortified by various positions held in the local Detroit-area post production, radio and television broadcast markets, including several stints as a radio personality and production engineer at Cumulus Media as well as the music and production director for a Disney/ABC Radio Networks show. He also tried his hand as a producer and camera operator for TCI Cable and Maclean-Hunter Television.      

After that, Salazar became the Director of Production Technical Operations, CIO & Audio Engineer for SunSpots Productions. In this position, Salazar oversaw all technical operations, including audio, video and IT for two voice-over production facilities and worked as an audio engineer. Some of his key contributions included implementing advanced post-production capabilities, designing an online Voice Talent preview/scheduling system and building an in-house data center, as well as six ProTools suites - all of which were instrumental to the growth of that production studio.

Salazar has redesigned, created and implemented various innovative processes to keep StudioZ at pace with the emerging technologies in the broadcast and post production industries. During his time at the studio, it has been transformed into a state-of-the-art multi-million dollar post production facility. Some of the key projects that Salazar led include rebuilding the entire video machine room, converting the studio from analog audio and video to several digital formats and creating the infrastructure for the engineering department, which is comprised of multiple render farms, 322 TB of storage, dozens of automations, including automating quality control processes and deliveries of broadcast media to DG Fast Channel.

Aside from being featured in many post-production engineering trade and industry publications, Salazar's education and training include having attended Film and Animation courses with the Detroit Film Coalition, where he was one of only a few students selected by over 100 applicants and has also participated in various National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conferences and invitational meetings, sometimes as the keynote speaker.