Steve George will succeed him

Jeff Littlejohn, one of the American radio industry’s best-known and most influential engineers, is retiring. The company announced Monday that Littlejohn is stepping down from his role as executive VP of engineering, although he will continue in an advisory role.

Steve George will succeed him with immediate effect.

The development ends what iHeart described as an “extraordinary 32 years” that began in 1992 with a job as chief engineer for Cincinnati.

“He rose through the ranks as he helped expand the company following the 1996 Telecommunications Act. He was part of the team that created the first version of the iHeartRadio app and worked with Toyota and Ford on the initial integration of iHeartRadio.”

More recently, he helped modernize iHeart’s studio facilities and convert to cloud-based audio systems.

Littlejohn received the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award in 2008 and the NAB Radio Engineering Achievement Award in 2014.

(Read our 2014 profile of Littlejohn after receiving the NAB award.)

He also chaired the NAB Radio Technical Committee. This summer, Littlejohn and Jurison were among the engineers who met with FCC officials to discuss the virtualization of the EAS system, at a meeting facilitated by the NAB.

Hartley Adkins, president of the Markets Group at iHeart, said, “There are few people in the industry with the expertise and longevity that Jeff has and we are grateful for the incredible work he has done for iHeart.”

George will lead the overall technical operations, systems and engineering teams that support iHeart’s 860 channels in 160 markets.

George began his career at iHeart in 2001 as Chief Engineer for the Sioux City, Iowa market. He was regional technical director in Omaha, Neb.; regional VP of engineering for the Midwest; and, most recently, VP of engineering and systems.

In recent weeks, iHeart has cut a number of jobs to cut costs, as has been widely reported. But Littlejohn told us that this move was on his initiative and that he would support the transition.

The circle of technical directors at commercial US radio companies is quite small, and this is the second notable departure of a top-level technical director in the past three months. As we reported in August, Mike Cooney left Beasley Media Group in August when the company eliminated his position.

In addition, Radio World learned today that Alan Jurison, iHeart’s senior operations engineer for the Technical Operations group, was dismissed last week. The company did not immediately respond to our request for comment on that, and Jurison declined to comment.