Prentis ‘PL’ Laird is the Associate Vice-President of Broadcast Engineering and Operations for Sinclair Broadcast Group. Based in Nashville, TN, he oversees engineering and technical operations for 185 Sinclair owned and/or operated television stations across the US.

PL has been with Sinclair since 2012 and has been part of the Corporate Engineering Team since 2014.  He has been involved in several major initiatives including Master Control and Production Control installations, the spectrum repack, ATSC 3.0 implementation, and most recently the migration of Master Control Operations to the cloud. He has overseen major station construction projects in New Bern, NC and Little Rock, AR.

Originally from New London, TX, PL served 6 years in the US Air Force as a Satellite Communications Technician and is a Desert Storm Veteran.  He was based at Bergstrom AFB (before it became an airport) and for 27 years, he called Austin home.

PL’s broadcast career started in 1992 as an Engineering Technician at KVUE.  For 9 years, he worked for Gulf Link Communications providing mobile satellite uplink services for the major networks including remote production, news gathering and sports backhauls.  From 2004 to 2014, PL worked at KEYE-TV as a Broadcast Engineer where he led many station projects including the transition to HD.

PL enjoys spending time with his family of 3 children and 3 grandkids.  He enjoys outdoor activities and is an avid camper.  He loves to cook; his passion is smoking Texas style BBQ.