Again, if the end result was to target the Vietnamese community in southwest Houston with brokered programming, it could have been done with the original 800 watt set up that RAFTT used.
The previous 800 watt signal was lousy in most of the market. And, it had a directional pattern originating south of Loop 610 aimed right at Belllaire, so the signal in SW Houston would not have been good.
The big day and night signal upgrades were to facilitate the SportsTalk format that Gow launched, with great fanfare, in 2007. According to the hype, "1560 The Game" was to be the new future of sports radio, with different programming and sales philosophies. IIRC, the first two 50kw transmitters at the day site were manufacturer lemons, which delayed KGOW from getting up to full power. This was well before the flooding issues plagued the day site. Then there was the original KGOW night signal, only 100 watts from the Galleria area which covered very little of the metro. The eventual night site in west Harris County helped, but due to other stations on the frequency, has to settle for very tightly restricted coverage.
I never cared for "The Game" as it was mostly moronic "guy talk." Unfortunately too much of that still infects the current SportsTalk on 97.5, although nowhere near the same extent 1560 had.
It doesn't need the current 46,000 watts to accomplish what Mediafrog envisions. It doesn't "need" to cover anything other than what it once did as KILE, considering its current audience.
But the current facilities are what they've got. I would guess the previous 800 watt site is long gone. And I don't think the day site is in use right now; every time I check during the day the station is transmitting from its night site (easy for me to DF at my Cy-Fair location as the two sites are 90 degrees apart.) And the 15kw directional signal from the night site is aimed directly at the parts of town where Vietnamese demographics are concentrated. If it were me, and VietRadio was in it for the long haul, I'd forget about the current day site and permanently go full time from the night site.
It certainly doesn't need a signal that reaches here in ETX like a local, nor make nightly visits to Wyoming and beyond.
The fact that it is being heard in Wyoming would seem to indicate that the night array is badly out of whack. I have to wonder how much of KGOW's transmitter woes are due to inadequate engineering expertise--we are constantly hearing that competent broadcast transmitter engineers are getting harder to find, as younger people with technical talent are going into more lucrative high tech industries.
I wonder if co-channel KTXZ in Austin, whose own transmitter is only 110 miles west of the KGOW night site, is experiencing more interference.
However, given what "the flagship of Gow Media" is currently airing, the entire process and expense that Gow went through from the initial purchase in 2007 up to current was for naught. 1560 is back to brokering time, just as it was when he found it on the market. Only, there's a hell of a lot more invested into it now; much more so than there ever was in the initial move to Houston.
Gow has probably been pulverized by the current pandemic; its web properties are focused on entertainment, cultural, and dining activities which are currently nonexistent or are in deep financial trouble. And there have been no sports to talk about on 97.5. They've gotta be hurting. The end game is probably a sale to a bigger conglomerate, with the radio stations being spun off, though I doubt that is happening any time soon.
