how many am/fm stations gone to being silent

[billyg]

Just for the record here's a couple of Dark AM's in East Texas

KRLW-AM 1280 Longview - Used to be KLUE-AM in the 60's/70's. This was the station that held the Beatles records burning in '66. A DJ was electrocuted the next day when lighting hit the tower. The usual combination of a weak (28 watts) night signal, numerous FCC violations and very incompetent management did this station in. I guess God got his revenge.

KZEY-AM 690 Tyler - the station still has a license, but it's been off the air for 4 years now and the towers have been torn down and equipment sold off. Long story!

I was going to mention KMOO-AM 1510 in Mineola, I was wondering why it went dark. But I just found out via google the station moved to Canton and is now known as KRDH.

 

[gbranch]

Just for the record here's a couple of Dark AM's in East Texas

KRLW-AM 1280 Longview - Used to be KLUE-AM in the 60's/70's. This was the station that held the Beatles records burning in '66. A DJ was electrocuted the next day when lighting hit the tower. The usual combination of a weak (28 watts) night signal, numerous FCC violations and very incompetent management did this station in. I guess God got his revenge.

I don't remember the KRLW calls on 1280, but after Radio Longview Inc sold the station to Pine Tree Media in 1984 and it dumped the Top 40 format, it went through seems like a dozen calls and formats. I remember KAAW, KARW, and KLGV. They tried various formats including country, oldies, standards, blues, gospel, and urban. IIRC, the station finally went dark in about 1995 when thieves broke into the studios on Signal Hill Dr. and made off with thousands of dollars worth of uninsured broadcast equipment. It was a sad ending to a once great 60's/70's Top 40 station. In the early 2000's, there was an app put in to resurrect 1280, but it never came to fruition and I don't think that a CP was ever issued.

The Beatles burning was well documented and in response to Lennon's "Beatles are bigger than Jesus" comments. It occurred on August 13, 1966. Several stations, mostly in the Bible belt, held similar protests to Lennon's comments. The day after the burning, the KLUE tower was hit by lightning, taking out much of the station's equipment and sending the news director to the hospital. He recovered.

Another dark station is KGRI 1000 in Henderson.

 

[arklatexradio]

1560 in Daingerfield is dark although its been on again off again for years

 

[gbranch]

1560 in Daingerfield is dark although its been on again off again for years

KNGR 1560 in Daingerfield has been plagued by signal problems since KGOW in Bellaire/Houston upgraded to a directional 50kW daytime signal. A major lobe of KGOW's signal points right at NE Texas, and during sunrise and sunset hours the station is like a local up here. I thought that KNGR had installed an FM translator in Daingerfield to help with this?

 

[billyg]

KNGR 1560 in Daingerfield has been plagued by signal problems since KGOW in Bellaire/Houston upgraded to a directional 50kW daytime signal. A major lobe of KGOW's signal points right at NE Texas, and during sunrise and sunset hours the station is like a local up here. I thought that KNGR had installed an FM translator in Daingerfield to help with this?

I thought that too, but I don't see any mention of it on their website or on Radio-Locator. Their internet stream is still online, so I guess they are still on the air. KNGR needs to move off 1560, but I doubt they have any money to do so.

And thanks for the info on 1280 in Longview. It may have been KARW instead of KRLW. A black minister by the name of Ray Lee Williams was running it for awhile with the intention to buy.

 

[jd]

I thought that KNGR had installed an FM translator in Daingerfield to help with this?

It looks like the plan (to relocate an existing translator) was scrapped, but I couldn't tell if the application was dismissed at the applicant's request: https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/w...t=25&appn=101250609&formid=911&fac_num=156757

K265DW 100.9 remains licensed to Mount Pleasant and is presumably still a translator for KNOI Sulphur Bluff.

KNGR needs to move off 1560, but I doubt they have any money to do so.

You're right, and they probably couldn't afford much of an engineering study. I could have seen just one nearby [adjacent] channel, 1550, as a possibility a few years ago. But that was before a construction permit was awarded for a station in Blanchard LA, near Shreveport.

 

[arklatexradio]

The Kings country online stream is still going but they have been off 1560 for a couple of years. A lady in Houston owns the station. Most recently it was on as a urban gospel station. The big problem is the Houston station.How did the FCC allow that to happen?

 

[Smittian]

The Kings country online stream is still going but they have been off 1560 for a couple of years. A lady in Houston owns the station. Most recently it was on as a urban gospel station. The big problem is the Houston station.How did the FCC allow that to happen?

$

 

[jd]

The big problem is the Houston station.How did the FCC allow that to happen?

That's a really long story, stretching over a number of years. Applications from KILE (now KGOW) showed that there would be no prohibited interference to KNGR, as well as several other stations on 1560 and adjacent channels.

This isn't an accusation of any doctoring of the data, but there are a lot of variables, like the time of day when the measurements are taken along with the time of the year. Something else is relevant, too, in that KGOW didn't have to afford KNGR any sort of "critical hours" protection, but only to stations in New York and Bakersfield CA. Of course, that's beside the point since KNGR's signal was sometimes getting slammed in the middle of the day. So what we have is a high-powered station's proposed pattern that worked on paper, according to the documentation that was provided, but failed to work in a real world situation.

A few years ago KNGR (as well as Galveston's KGBC 1540) complained about severe interference when KILE first fired up the 50,000 watt transmitter and started running program tests. It was too late, however, since the deal was already done and the complaints were thrown out on a technicality by the FCC.

 

[stuckinthe50s]

Then there's another station that doesn't exist that probably should be deleted from FCC records, KZEY 690 Tyler. There's no studio, no transmitter and the land where the towers stood was sold at auction to cover back taxes.

Jerry Russell -- excuse me, Mister Russell -- must have friends in high places. ;D

 

[purpledevil]

The big problem is the Houston station.How did the FCC allow that to happen?

That's a really long story, stretching over a number of years. Applications from KILE (now KGOW) showed that there would be no prohibited interference to KNGR, as well as several other stations on 1560 and adjacent channels.

This isn't an accusation of any doctoring of the data, but there are a lot of variables, like the time of day when the measurements are taken along with the time of the year. Something else is relevant, too, in that KGOW didn't have to afford KNGR any sort of "critical hours" protection, but only to stations in New York and Bakersfield CA. Of course, that's beside the point since KNGR's signal was sometimes getting slammed in the middle of the day. So what we have is a high-powered station's proposed pattern that worked on paper, according to the documentation that was provided, but failed to work in a real world situation.

A few years ago KNGR (as well as Galveston's KGBC 1540) complained about severe interference when KILE first fired up the 50,000 watt transmitter and started running program tests. It was too late, however, since the deal was already done and the complaints were thrown out on a technicality by the FCC.

If memory serves correctly, 1590 KMIC was another station none too happy about the upgraded KILE/KGOW, and was in on the formal complaint.

 

[jd]

You're right about the Radio Disney people complaining but it was in regard to the nighttime signal. KGOW was able to convince the FCC that there wouldn't be any prohibited overlap to KMIC at either power level, the original 19kW or the 15kW that was approved. According to the revised application, Gow cut back on the power to avoid interference to a station on 1560 in Cuba, of all places.

 

[jd]

There's something else that's relevant to the topic of this thread that hasn't been addressed. Specifically, it's about expanded band stations and their co-owned stations still operating in the "standard" AM band. If all had gone according to plan the stations had five years to decide whether to continue with their X-band operation and turn in the license for the "original" station (or vice versa). Here are the situations where this didn't happen:

WTAW 1620 and KZNE 1150 College Station (Bryan Broadcasting)
KKGM 1630 and KHVN 970 Fort Worth (Mortenson Broadcasting)
KSVE 1650 and KHRO 1150 El Paso (Entravision Holdings)

All of these operations were granted special temporary authority to continue the dual operation beyond their drop-dead dates, although there appears to be no current STA for any of them, at least as noted on the FCC website. So the point is that technically three stations should have gone silent and had their call letters deleted. In reality, with all the legal maneuvering over the years, probably nothing is going to change anytime soon. Three other X-band operators in Texas did turn in the licenses for their other stations (KRZI Waco, KDSX Denison and KBOR Brownsville, noted earlier). Maybe they could have held out a while longer, considering the way the FCC has been acting (or not acting) on these matters.

 

[billyg]

This isn't an accusation of any doctoring of the data, but there are a lot of variables, like the time of day when the measurements are taken along with the time of the year. Something else is relevant, too, in that KGOW didn't have to afford KNGR any sort of "critical hours" protection, but only to stations in New York and Bakersfield CA. Of course, that's beside the point since KNGR's signal was sometimes getting slammed in the middle of the day. So what we have is a high-powered station's proposed pattern that worked on paper, according to the documentation that was provided, but failed to work in a real world situation.

The people that built KGOW must have lucked out and found a site with excellent ground conductivity for their daytime transmitter if it's not supposed to go that far north! From what I read on the Houston board they blew a lot of cash to get it on the air. And its a sad fact that most small station owners never check up on their neighbors on adjacent channels to see what they're doing.

While KNGR installed a new folded dipole tower, solid state transmitter and went to 1500 watts a few years ago, it's in a bad ground area (an engineer told me that) and always had a weak signal. Sorry to hear it's gone dark again. I wonder if it's up for sale?

 

[arklatexradio]

KNGR is for sale and has been for several years 150k is the asking price from what I understand

 

[willdav713]

San Antonio

KBOP then KBUC 98.3 2000 (KBBT The Beat signed on frequency 98.5)
98.7 Translator for 94.1 silent 2000
KESI 106.3 (moved to 106.7) 1986

Austin

KRMA 103.7 (80s)
KHFI K-98.3 (1990)

Fredericksburg

KFAN 101.1 (90s)

 

[mmnassour]

Don't KRMH/Austin and KHFI/Austin qualify as stations that simply moved to different frequencies?

 

[fredcantu]

I was thinking that, too. Those stations just changed frequency when they upgraded. Their license was never cancelled which was the theme of this thread.

Now if you want to muse about the small town local services that were lost to the big city, that would make a good thread, too.

 

[mmnassour]

And a loooooooooooooong thread.

Can you say KTAE?

 

[fredcantu]

Small town radio operations gone but not forgotten in the Austin area... KCLT-AM Lockhart, KELG-AM Elgin, KGTN AM/FM Georgetown, KGID-FM Giddings, KIXS-FM Killeen, KLTD-FM Lampasas, KMRB-FM Marble Falls, KRGT Hutto, KSSR-FM Bastrop, KTAE-AM Taylor.