About NORCOM
Originally founded in 1985, NORCOM was purchased in 1999 and reorganized in the State of Oregon as Northwest Communications Systems, LLC (dba NORCOM). Based in Forest Grove, Oregon, near Portland, NORCOM continues to do business primarily in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Hawaii, as well as throughout the U.S. NORCOM specializes in RF transmission systems for satellite communications, broadcast microwave, and over-the-air broadcasting. Tom Franklin is the President of Northwest Communications Systems, LLC.
About Tom Franklin
Tom Franklin has been involved in broadcasting for over 48 years. Beginning in 1963, while a high school sophomore in Springfield, Illinois, Tom worked for WTAX and WCVS radio as a part-time remote engineer. He made the move to television in 1965 as a transmitter engineer for WICS-TV (20), also in Springfield. A year later, a two-year stretch in the US Army Signal Corps took him to Germany assigned to a fixed microwave company in Kaiserslautern where he maintained 13 microwave sites in the Rheinland-Pfalz area.
In 1968, after his military service, Tom returned to the States and worked as a staff engineer at KOMU-TV(8) in Columbia, Missouri. Three years later, he joined the Donrey Media Group as assistant chief engineer at KORK-TV(3) in Las Vegas. During his 15 years in Las Vegas, Tom was Director of Engineering for KLAS-TV(8) and Vice-President of Engineering for Sunbelt Broadcasting. An offer to join Sony Broadcast as a regional sales executive lured Tom to Portland, Oregon in 1986. In 1990, he assumed the duties of Director of Engineering for Oregon Ed-Net, a satellite-based distance learning network operated by the State of Oregon. Ten years later, Tom purchased NORCOM.
Tom holds an FCC General Radiotelephone License, an FAA Commercial Pilot license for helicopters, and has attended the University of Missouri, Perdue University, and Portland State University.