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Construction Permit for KGOW Nighttime

T

Tonytoga

The Federal Communications Commission issued a Construction Permit this afternoon for 15,000 watts at night. There will of course, be a great deal of conversation on this blog regarding what happened here and what comes next for the KGOW crew and their format......but this one thing is certain: this was one of the most daring and clever engineering propositions in the history of Houston Radio, certainly in the modern era of AM radio. No doubt, many a consulting engineer who took a look at the proposal vowed it would never be approved. Those involved are to be heartily congratulated.
 
Congratulations guys! Missed out on the Astros, but maybe Texans/Rockets/Horns will come a knockin'. Here's to future success and domination of Houston sports!

Justsayin
 
Financing?

We have the cash in hand.

In these tough financially tough times cash in hand is a blessing. Considering there are a grand total of zero new construction AM sticks going up I cannot imagine how we will find competitive pricing.
 
Game on!

I had a feeling that approval of the application was coming soon. Of course there's still plenty of hard work to do; building a complicated nine-tower high-powered nighttime array is going to take a lot of time. Congratulations to David Gow and everyone at KGOW, especially their engineer Bob Morrow. This truly is an amazing feat.
 
This is actually an amazing thing. 15kw in this city at night?

Domestically, I did not foresee a problem, but I never thought they would squeak this through Mexico?

Glad Gow has the money to build this thing. Nice to see the "little guy" do well.
 
justsayin said:
Congratulations guys! Missed out on the Astros, but maybe Texans/Rockets/Horns will come a knockin'. Here's to future success and domination of Houston sports!
Click to expand...

Forget about the Texans; they will want an AM/FM combo, as they have now. And the one-game-a-week dynamics are greatly different from the other sports.

Rockets would be a more realistic possibility, plus adding more college sports.

Perhaps try for the Astros in 2013 when the next deal is up? Would be a good fit and fills a lot of airtime.

Nonetheless, congrats to the KGOW folks. Any target date for the new site hitting the air?
 
I don't know why everyone loves this pattern. Look how much of the city it misses! And for that matter, how sharp the null is toward Kingwood (a money area). It's better than what they have now but not very good overall.
 
You can get a few miles up 45 from the 610 towers and not be able to hear 610 at all. Their null to the north is very deep, but the flip side of that is excellent coverage of the rest of the metro. It's practically crystal clear in Galveston.
 
schmave said:
I don't know why everyone loves this pattern. Look how much of the city it misses! And for that matter, how sharp the null is toward Kingwood (a money area). It's better than what they have now but not very good overall.
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly in love with the pattern but all things considered the power level itself is pretty amazing. The Mexican government was satisfied by KGOW conceding to a relatively minor change in the alignment but there are plenty of other reasons the pattern looks the way it does (New York, Austin, Bakersfield, Oklahoma City, et al). The reasons for that major null toward Kingwood are KMIC 1590 and of all things, a station in Cuba.

schmave said:
You can get a few miles up 45 from the 610 towers and not be able to hear 610 at all.
Click to expand...

I know, and that's pretty frustrating. It might be possible for 610 to move their towers to provide a better signal into Montgomery County but there are a couple of problems with that. Even by moving a few miles the power might have to be reduced to afford protection to KCSP Kansas City, a 5,000-watt non-directional station that covers a lot of ground and, as we've discussed here, the further north you place the towers the worse the ground conductivity becomes. The combination of those things might amount to 610 sacrificing their signal strength into much of Houston.
 
So how does Houston support FOUR all-sports stations?

--KILT 610, owned by CBS with overnight/weekend programming provided by Sporting News. Rated #25.
--KBME 790, owned by Clear Channel with overnight/weekend programming provided by Fox Sports. Rated #31.
--KFNC 97.5, owned by Cumulus with some programming provided by ESPN. Tied for #36.
--KGOW 1560, locally owned with overnight programming provided by Sports Byline. Tied for #38.

Only Phoenix has more sports stations... they have five, including an ESPN Deportes outlet.



Gregg
[email protected]
 
I believe 920 KYST used to carry ESPN Deportes but is not on the current affiliate list.
The nearest is 1260 KWNX in the Austin market.
 
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