I didn't want to hijack the ongoing thread on KHCB but I thought several people on this board interested in history might enjoy this. There are gaps in my research but this is what I have on this station now:
On November 28, 1923, George Roy Clough of 1214 40th Street in Galveston was issued a license for a radio station in Galveston by the Navigation Bureau of the Commerce Department, the third such license issued for Galveston. He was authorized to operate on 1250 kilocycles with 10 watts and was assigned the call letters KFLX.
Clough had been bitten by the radio bug and caught the Marconi virus as a boy, as have so many of us, and had been an early and very successful experimenter with wireless in Galveston. As early as 1907 at about the age of fifteen, he had flown a kite with 200 feet of iron wire suspended from it attached to his crystal set and brought in transmissions from the American de Forest Wireless Telegraph station at New Orleans; then he heard both the Galveston and Houston de Forest stations answer. Within days, he and a friend had constructed a crude sending device using such materials as an old hairpin box, a tin can, an iron pipe, Leyden jars to store current and an induction coil to transmit a spark. It was so successful he was able to disrupt the transmissions of the Galveston station and insert his own message, which drew a response from someone at de Forest warning the boy not to do that again.
The mid-1924 Commerce Department’s official list of radio stations showed KFLX was sharing time on 1250 kc with another new Galveston station, KFOQ. KFOQ was to last less than a year and several other Galveston stations came and went throughout the 20s but Clough managed to persevere. At times he was the whole radio station, owner, operator, engineer and staff. Jack McGrew, who worked for KFDM in Beaumont and later for many years for KPRC, visited Clough in the 20s while in Galveston for a sports remote for KFDM. He described Clough as playing records as they talked, flipping records from side to side and back again or playing the same side over and over again, without any announcements to the audience or taking care to put the needle down at the beginning of the side. (He seems to have had the idea of a tight playlist long before other operators).
By the end of the decade, KFLX had moved to 1370 kilocycles. Sometime in the early 30s the only other Galveston station still on the air, KFUL, licensed to Thomas Goggan & Brothers Piano Co., which was headquartered in Galveston but had stores all over the state including downtown Houston, ceased operations, and by the mid-30s the KFLX calls were changed to KLUF. Sometime subsequently, probably as a result of NARBA in 1941, the station settled in on 1400 kc and then sometime after 1951, the call letters changed to KILE.
KHCB-AM is the heir of KFLX/KLUF/KILE and is the oldest continuously licensed radio station in the Houston-Galveston area that has always been licensed to the Houston-Galveston area -- a year and a half older than KPRC. It can also claim to be the oldest station in the whole Texas Gulf Coast region, beating KLVI, Beaumont, by 11 months. (KTRH is older than all three but spent it’s first 8 years in Austin).
Incidentally, Clough served as Mayor of Galveston in the late 1950s on a platform of bringing back gambling.
On November 28, 1923, George Roy Clough of 1214 40th Street in Galveston was issued a license for a radio station in Galveston by the Navigation Bureau of the Commerce Department, the third such license issued for Galveston. He was authorized to operate on 1250 kilocycles with 10 watts and was assigned the call letters KFLX.
Clough had been bitten by the radio bug and caught the Marconi virus as a boy, as have so many of us, and had been an early and very successful experimenter with wireless in Galveston. As early as 1907 at about the age of fifteen, he had flown a kite with 200 feet of iron wire suspended from it attached to his crystal set and brought in transmissions from the American de Forest Wireless Telegraph station at New Orleans; then he heard both the Galveston and Houston de Forest stations answer. Within days, he and a friend had constructed a crude sending device using such materials as an old hairpin box, a tin can, an iron pipe, Leyden jars to store current and an induction coil to transmit a spark. It was so successful he was able to disrupt the transmissions of the Galveston station and insert his own message, which drew a response from someone at de Forest warning the boy not to do that again.
The mid-1924 Commerce Department’s official list of radio stations showed KFLX was sharing time on 1250 kc with another new Galveston station, KFOQ. KFOQ was to last less than a year and several other Galveston stations came and went throughout the 20s but Clough managed to persevere. At times he was the whole radio station, owner, operator, engineer and staff. Jack McGrew, who worked for KFDM in Beaumont and later for many years for KPRC, visited Clough in the 20s while in Galveston for a sports remote for KFDM. He described Clough as playing records as they talked, flipping records from side to side and back again or playing the same side over and over again, without any announcements to the audience or taking care to put the needle down at the beginning of the side. (He seems to have had the idea of a tight playlist long before other operators).
By the end of the decade, KFLX had moved to 1370 kilocycles. Sometime in the early 30s the only other Galveston station still on the air, KFUL, licensed to Thomas Goggan & Brothers Piano Co., which was headquartered in Galveston but had stores all over the state including downtown Houston, ceased operations, and by the mid-30s the KFLX calls were changed to KLUF. Sometime subsequently, probably as a result of NARBA in 1941, the station settled in on 1400 kc and then sometime after 1951, the call letters changed to KILE.
KHCB-AM is the heir of KFLX/KLUF/KILE and is the oldest continuously licensed radio station in the Houston-Galveston area that has always been licensed to the Houston-Galveston area -- a year and a half older than KPRC. It can also claim to be the oldest station in the whole Texas Gulf Coast region, beating KLVI, Beaumont, by 11 months. (KTRH is older than all three but spent it’s first 8 years in Austin).
Incidentally, Clough served as Mayor of Galveston in the late 1950s on a platform of bringing back gambling.