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End of An Era: KWTV To Take Down Historic Broadcast Tower

1500+ ft in the early 50s: that did stretch up there a ways. A friend of mine who lived in KS and OK back in the early 80s is how I first learned about World's Tallest Video.

Those really tall towers were a challenge to build. In the Cedar Rapids -Waterloo market, all of the original 3 network affiliates have lost towers. WMT-TV (KGAN) built a 1400 footer in the mid 50s which if I remember the story right, fell before it was completed, so it had to be rebuilt. KCRG lost a 2000 footer in '73 that killed several people on the tower crew that was reinforcing it for a public TV antenna installation. And KWWL lost their 2000 footer in '83 from catastrophic failure in an ice and wind storm.
 
KML-224 said:
So where is their replacement tower going? :confused:
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With the change to digital from analog signals the News 9 signal moved to a different tower that is a shared tower with other stations. That’s why the KWTV tower is coming down. A company that specializes in removing broadcast towers has been hired to take it down piece by piece this fall. Once it's down, a scrap metal company will take it to be recycled.
 
OP did provide a link to the story, by the way. It's a well produced video piece, even though the transcript of it spelled "gin pole" as "gym pull." Gin pole is a term that isn't exactly in common usage so the staff and/or the speech recognition software gets a pass.
 
If they explained the antenna height above ground on the new shared-tower location I missed it.

So what is the trend now in TV. With so many people on cable, how much investment and expense can be justified to keep the really, really tall towers. The trend in rural areas is to have fewer and fewer people living in the rural area, with more people in towns... even if they simply leave the farm and move into the nearby country seat.

The extra audience obtained by being taller has to be much, much smaller that it once was.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:

So what is the trend now in TV. With so many people on cable, how much investment and expense can be justified to keep the really, really tall towers. The trend in rural areas is to have fewer and fewer people living in the rural area, with more people in towns... even if they simply leave the farm and move into the nearby country seat.

.
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Even though you have been critical of the logic behind one of my posts on another topic, I have addressed it there.

The market for tall towers today has to be close to zero. Stations have to co-locate on a single tower to make it economically feasible today. Wait, that was five years ago. OTA TV to survive is going to need plenty of rugged, inexpensive low-power transmitters economically deployed on 500' or less towers. And good luck finding econmical rent or places that want new towers.

Stations are really going to have to be protective of their current investment in towers that are hopefully paid off.
 
joebtsflk1 said:
Even though you have been critical of the logic behind one of my posts on another topic, I have addressed it there.
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Well, that sent me back through recent posts to see what kind of trouble I am in. I think I found the exchange, and yes, maybe my response had a little too much "in your face" comment in it. Sorry about that.

I try to not rough PEOPLE up, but I do bounce logic back and forth. In my case, the point is not to WIN a back and forth, but to contribute to a conversation painting the fullest picture possible. Roughing up a concept is part of the game in open discussion, roughing up a person almost never has a valid place to sit.

AND NOW: a thought or two about the thread.

Even towers that are paid for can be costly to light, paint and otherwise maintain. And depending on the neighborhood, the land on which the tower sits can be very, very valuable. I can visualize cases where it would make sense to move FROM a fully paid-for tower over to a shared tower, and then bank the money and earn more from the investment that the shared tower rental amounts to.

One of the UPSIDES of the consolidation that has taken place in broadcasting is that the corporations operating stations (radio or TV) now are likely to have some aggressive, creative accountants who understand how other industries are managing their assets and bring those concepts to an industry that years ago had pretty simplistic financial methodology.
 
I hate to trot out old tired examples I've used before, but it might illustrate your point. In 1987 KTVO at Kirksville MO built a 2000 footer midway between Kirksville and Quincy IL. The station was sold that same year. The next year, the tower fell during modifications. The new owners never bothered to rebuild, choosing to retreat to the original 1100 ft tower between Kirksville and Ottumwa.

In the process, a friend of mine lost his first TV job out of college, as KTVO didn't need a River Cities bureau when the shorter and further away 1100 footer could barely get a signal east to the river.

The new owners of KTVO at that time must have thought that sinking the insurance settlement they (hopefully) received back into a new tower wasn't a good investment, or the new owners were undercapitalized at the start, and the insurance settlement saved their shorts. It would be interesting to know how they arrived to that decision.

Moving on to a couple of current cases that I know: The Crown Point tower complex in Omaha has been home to four separate towers all in a row, each about 1200' for the original three TV affiliates, plus one used by several FMs. The city has grown up along the four towers, so it's landlocked today. It would seem that all of the stations would benefit by forming a tower cooperative, consolidating to one candelabra style tower directly adjacent to one of the existing towers, then dismantling the others and selling off the land.

Either the land doesn't hold enough value to make a shared tower worthwhile, all the different egos at the various ownership groups don't comfortably fit in the same room together, or the land DOES hold enough value to make a shared tower worthwhile, but the stations decide that it isn't worth the risk in case of a tower collapse during construction. Indeed, one of the stations at Crown Point, KETV, lost their tower in 2008 during modifications to install a combo VHF analog/UHF digital antenna.

Then there's the case of Saga's cluster of radio stations in Des Moines. Four FMs and two AMs, all at different sites. Two of the FMs are separated by 30 miles as they're 10.8 MHz apart. (93.3C1 and 104.1C0) So, those two aren't going to play nice together. A third station SE of Des Moines, 103.3C1, has to stay about 20 miles away from a separately owned C2 on 92.5, that 10.8 Mhz problem again.

In the 90s, Saga thought they had a solution. They proposed a single tower about 15 miles east of downtown for 93.3, 102.5 and 103.3. Alas, they couldn't get it through zoning. At least they tried.
 
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