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Airplane Strikes KCBD Tower

814 ft tall (overall, antenna included) right behind the studios....Piper Malibu flown by local doctor hit tower or one guy wire under low cloud ceiling...plane crashed, pilot was sadly killed...More than half the tower toppled...about 250 or so still standing but leaning because only 2 guys are left. Building lost power at the same time due to power lines snapped and not sure why a genset did not start...may have been damaged?? NTSB on scene already and investigating.

Lubbock ISD media center gave KCBD studios to do their 10pm and this morning newscast. Suddenlink cable still carrying fiber feed from them so NBC is still up cable (and maybe sats...not sure how DISH/Directv gets their feeds)...Tower will have to be totally rebuilt. Thankfully, noone in the building was injured. Tower fell toward parking lot but missed vehicles in it...but probably some damage from flying debris, etc.

Sad to see any accident that results in a death....no confirmation if the pilot was IFR rated or not. Even if he was, he was low under FAA rules. Evidently missed approach once and had done a 360 to try another landing attempt.
 
Hate to say it, but Channel 11 is done for. The tower may be beyond repair.

Time for another subchannel shuffle! (It happens all the time in smaller markets.)

Maybe Raycom could buy KJTV from Ramar Communications and move NBC to 34.2. It would also buy low power KJTV-CD and the construction permit for KLBB-LD.

KJTV (RF 35): 34.1 FOX (720p HD), 34.2 NBC (720p HD), 34.3 MeTV (480i SD)
KJTV-CD (RF 33): 32.1 News (720p HD), 32.2 Weather (480i SD), 32.3 Telemundo (720p HD)
KLBB-LD (CP) (RF 48): 48.1 ThisTV (480i SD), 48.2 Grit (480i SD), 48.3 H&I (480i SD)

Ramar would keep KLCW, KMYL-LD and KXTQ-CA.

As always, pure speculation, may or may not happen.

BTW, how has KCBD been doing in the ratings?
 
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Or, much more likely and grounded in reality, KCBD builds a new tower and 11 signs back on some time later this year.

- Trip
 
tripinva said:
Or, much more likely and grounded in reality, KCBD builds a new tower and 11 signs back on some time later this year.

- Trip
Click to expand...

Exactly. It's fun to speculate, but there'll be insurance money involved and KCBD will either build a new tower or lease space on some existing tower. (They're on RF-11, so I don't think there's a spectrum auction scenario that benefits them.)

I doubt Ramar would be interested in selling or even a channel share arrangement, although a 720p and a 1080i can co-exist on the same channel.
 
tripinva said:
Or, much more likely and grounded in reality, KCBD builds a new tower and 11 signs back on some time later this year.

- Trip
Click to expand...

800 foot sticks are not hard to rebuild..only concern in this situation is the FM that was also on the tower..I'm sure they are looking for a new site already and will be back on the air before RF11 is....Since KCBD had the tower completely on their land and when it fell, it did no damage to the building, the remaining tower sections will be easy dropped by a crane, and a new one rebuilt on the exact spot (UNLESS the city or some crazed neighbor tries to file against it...and that has happened before..when 39 in Dallas fell in 1996, city of Cedar Hill put a total ban on new towers for a while...sooo Richland pulled a neat trick and applied for an almost 2000 ft one south of the city off the hill...and just outside city limits..the county approved it and the city was PISSED....Richland had plans to build two tall ones south but later ended up buying some of the other sticks inside the city limits (KTVT, the "master" tower that was holding the three CBS FMs and I think one more).

I bet KCBD starts rebuilding soon...I understand a new antenna has already been shipped.
 
ContinuousWave said:
I bet KCBD starts rebuilding soon...I understand a new antenna has already been shipped.
Click to expand...

Really? I sort of doubt an antenna vendor just happened to have an RF11 antenna in stock.
 
It sounds like they've got the analog antenna from KMSB in Tucson coming.

- Trip
 
One of the competitors (The FOX station iirc) has already put KCBD up on a subchannel of their signal (UHF but it probably has the same range as the RF 11 signal did since ERP on UHF is always much higher...)

The replacement antenna is already on site...Yes it was from their sister station in AZ...only good thing about group ownership....
 
The remains of the tower were deemed to be unstable and thusly were taken down a day or so after the accident - nothing to salvage on this tower.

Serious doubt that KCBD would want to be a sub channel since they already had 2 sub channels of their own, it would put them at a serious competitive disadvantage in the market.

Channel 33 which KCBD was temporarily on is a low power channel, no where near the coverage they had.

They are back on the air on RF 11 with 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3 but do not appear to be at full power, some pixellation and drop outs from time to time.

It appears that they are also on 11.1 on RF 33 - right now 11.1,11.2 and 11.3 are back down on RF 11 so they are working on it today.

A scan about an hour ago showed RF 11 to be live but now it is down.
 
Update: KCBD is now broadcasting from its new tower and antenna. Just two days into May sweeps.
 
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