Signing Off: Demolition of Old Radio Station (KMBZ Former Transmitter Site)

[RF101]

(I am placing this in the "Kansas" forum although most folks would consider the station a Kansas City, Missouri outlet. KMBZ's former transmitter site was located in Westwood, Kansas, within Johnson County. )

There is a wonderful piece just publishled in "Flatfland" about the history and demolition of the old KMBZ site. Kudos to the author Brian Burnes. (Published April 16th, 2021 at 6:00 AM)

Signing Off: Demolition of Old Radio Station Triggers Nostalgia in Westwood

In Westwood, Kansas, demolition of an old radio station has triggered a wave of nostalgia.

www.flatlandkc.org

......
Story item starts...

Paging Wolfman Jack.

In Westwood, demolition crews tearing down an old radio station recently revealed an even older radio station – or, more precisely, the station building’s old tower transmitter facility, which dated to the early 1930s.

The small, squat structure still bore the faded outlines of the station’s call letters, KMBC, on its fatigued façade.

“It’s like radio station archaeology,” said Chuck Haddix, local music and radio scholar.

“It looks like an Egyptian tomb,” said Ellen Schenk, who served as a news anchor for many years at KMBZ.

The building had been embedded within a larger, more contemporary complex, most recently occupied by Entercom Communications (now known as Audacy). But after being visible for several days, the old structure vanished for good on Wednesday, demolished to make way for a new elementary school.

....
(The rest is available online.)

 

[Mikey Radio]

In Westwood, demolition crews tearing down an old radio station recently revealed an even older radio station – or, more precisely, the station building’s old tower transmitter facility, which dated to the early 1930s.

This was an interesting story - thanks for posting it!

In reading the full story in the link you posted, it reminds me a bit of a news item about a station that burned down a few years back. Similar story to this one, it was a legacy station dating back decades. As offices, then a sales department were later added, they built around the original smaller structure, and then added roofs on top of the original one to make it all blend in and look like one large, newer building. To boot, the transmitters and tower were adjacent to the building so they evidently had issues with RF interference to the equipment in the on-air and production studios, so the engineering staff installed fine copper mesh screen just above the drop ceiling throughout, in an attempt to limit or negate the interference.

When firefighters arrived and found the station burning, they ended up more or less losing most of it, because when they tried to pull the drop ceiling they ran into the scores of copper mesh which hampered them and their attack, then the fire made its way into the void space between the older, original roof and the newer one. If I recall correctly it was a smaller, more rural volunteer fire department without the necessary tools to properly penetrate the roofs and extinguish the fire quickly.

 

[TheBigA]

Apparently that demolition project has been going on for a few years. Scott Fybush traveled to Kansas City and visited the Entercom studio complex in 2017. During that article (linked here) he mentions the Westwood demolition:

This cluster came together from a bunch of different pieces, primarily the stations that had assembled around KMBZ (980) at its former studio/transmitter home just over a mile to the east on Belinder Avenue in Westwood, Kansas. While the studios had long since moved out of that location, the KMBZ transmitter had stayed behind – but that was changing early in 2017, and in fact demolition of that historic site was just getting underway when we were passing through. (But it was raining, and we’d seen it from the outside on previous visits, so we didn’t go over for a last look, nor did we get over to the new KMBZ AM site on the east side of town, diplexed with Bott’s KCCV 760.)

Site of the Week 11/10/17: Kansas City and Columbia, MO

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH PPD; rain As our cross-country drive home from the NAB Show in April 2017

www.fybush.com

 

[Mikey Radio]

Apparently that demolition project has been going on for a few years. Scott Fybush traveled to Kansas City and visited the Entercom studio complex in 2017. During that article (linked here) he mentions the Westwood demolition:

Yep, it has. Though the article @RF101 provided the link to was just written a few days ago, the information below in italics was contained within. This would align with what @fybush reported during his visit:

"In recent years the radio station property has prompted news both routine and tragic.
Workers completed upgrades to the site’s two towers after a 2008 permit review...
In 2016 the Shawnee Mission Board of Education approved the school district’s purchase of the site. By 2018, the two towers had been disassembled and removed.
In January, voters approved a $264 million school district bond issue. One of the projects funded by the bonds is a new Westwood View Elementary School. Construction of the new school is expected to begin soon after demolition is completed."

 

[davideduardo]

In reading the full story in the link you posted, it reminds me a bit of a news item about a station that burned down a few years back. Similar story to this one, it was a legacy station dating back decades. When firefighters arrived and found the station burning, they ended up more or less losing most of it, because when they tried to pull the drop ceiling they ran into the scores of copper mesh which hampered them and their attack, then the fire made its way into the void space between the older, original roof and the newer one.

I'd never considered Faraday shields to be a hazard in the event of fires. On two builds at studio locations at transmitter sites in Puerto Rico, we put wire mesh or welded sheet metal sheeting into the walls, under the raised floor and attached to the ceiling which was also the roof. But in tropical climates, construction is mostly poured reinforced concrete, so we had solid outside walls, flooring and ceilings all around with nothing to burn in the building structure.

I used to get scared when I'd see radio stations inside old houses that had been converted. The most frightening to me was the original set of houses used by Motown Records in Detroit with sound studios and all kinds of electronic and electrical instrument amplifiers and gear all over!


The worst, though, was the site of the station I managed in Miami, WHTT, which had an elevated solid reinforced concrete transmitter building. "Classic" white redneck nationalists drilled through a wall, poured in liquid explosive and torched it, causing an explosion and total interior destruction that blew holes in the solid concrete walls.

 

[Mikey Radio]

I'd never considered Faraday shields to be a hazard in the event of fires. On two builds at studio locations at transmitter sites in Puerto Rico, we put wire mesh or welded sheet metal sheeting into the walls, under the raised floor and attached to the ceiling which was also the roof. But in tropical climates, construction is mostly poured reinforced concrete, so we had solid outside walls, flooring and ceilings all around with nothing to burn in the building structure.

If I recall, in the situation I was speaking of, the material was similar to the wire mesh you'd find in window screens, but made of more rigid copper. It was lying just on top the drop ceiling panels, most likely installed by a past well-intentioned engineer or construction worker in an area of the country that most likley had lax building codes and enforcement (as mentioned above, it was a more rural area with a volunteer fire dept. that didn't even possess the tools to penetrate the wooden roof when the fire made its way into the void space). It wasn't a "hazard" per se, but from what I remember, when the fire department started pulling the drop ceilings, that interwoven blanket of wire mesh screen hampered their efforts and wouldn't let them easily get a direct attack on the fire.

 

[Mikey Radio]

I used to get scared when I'd see radio stations inside old houses that had been converted. The most frightening to me was the original set of houses used by Motown Records in Detroit with sound studios and all kinds of electronic and electrical instrument amplifiers and gear all over!

I only worked in one situation like that, where an AM/FM combo I worked for had purchased a 3 BR ranch home with a finished basement and used it for their studio and business operations. It was also in a more rural location, and though they never erected any signage to advertise what the home was being used for since it wasn't "zoned" for that and they said they didn't want to call any attention to it, the station van was nearly always parked out front, and the entire front lawn was graveled over for the staff to park each day.

The living room was used for the secretary's desk and as the waiting area, with the kitchen directly off that. On the main floor the 2 smaller bedrooms became the GM and Manager's offices, and the master bedroom at the back was split into 2, with the left side becoming the air studio for the FM, and the right side used for the AM studio. The "his and hers" closets had their doors removed and equipment racks were installed. The sales office was located in the basement, and the dishes to pull in programming were installed in the back yard. Of course, the building didn't have fire detection or suppression systems and had it been located in an area where building codes (and zoning laws) were followed and enforced, few things about this particular setup would've passed as they were.

 

[davideduardo]

If I recall, in the situation I was speaking of, the material was similar to the wire mesh you'd find in window screens, but made of more rigid copper. It was lying just on top the drop ceiling panels, most likely installed by a past well-intentioned engineer or construction worker...

Unfortunately, RF really does not respect just a protected ceiling... the material has to cover the top, bottom and sides and have a well defined common ground that matches the broadcast equipment common ground. Otherwise, the mesh just becomes a reflector or re-radiator and, in certain cases it can become "hot" if not attached to a common ground.

 

[TheBigA]

Back to the OP...it's sort of sad that these historic transmitter buildings are getting demolished. We read about the huge AM tower land being sold for huge profits. But typically on the tower land is the original transmitter building.

“People were surprised that the building itself had been buried in the larger building and that the call letters could still be seen,”

That's not unusual. Lots of companies built more modern offices around their original building. The historic "Quonset Hut" where Patsy Cline recorded her hits in the 1950s is embedded in what was for many years the Columbia Records building in Nashville. You can see the faint outline of the hut's curved roof from the parking lot in the back of the building.

These old transmitter buildings are small but stately, a vestige of an era when broadcasting was a service, and the technical plant required a staff of engineers to oversee and maintain the old tube transmitters. I've visited a few of these buildings and they're usually made of reinforced concrete. The term "brick sh*thouse applies. They make them look nice on the outside, but inside they're all industrial.

“They built this building to last,” Dehn said Wednesday as the last building was coming down. “But concrete doesn’t last forever and it is coming apart easily,” he added.

One by one these old transmitter buildings will all come down. These days an AM transmitter doesn't need an entire building.

 

[Kent]

Entercom/Audacy left 4935 Belinder for Squibb Rd around 15 years ago, but it, of course, had to keep the old location due to the towers for KMBZ being there. If I remember correctly, it had to get the City of Westwood to re-approve those towers at certain intervals, and, over time, the city council and administration became more and more hostile toward them. New residents moving into the area also frequently complained they were unsightly.

I can't remember if Entercom decided to fight the problem by not fighting it or if they city renewed its authorization to keep the towers with the understanding it would move KMBZ before it was over, but the bureaucratic red tape and overall hostility toward that two tower array became pretty extreme. So, KMBZ 980 ended up moving to the KCCV 760 array, which, I believe, is not too far from the I-70/435 interchange near the sports complex. The array across from the candelabras that host most of the TV signals and many of the FM's is for 1190, but I seem to remember KCCV is a mile or two south of there. If you were headed for the old Bannister Mall from the sports complex, you'd see it on the west side of 435 shortly after passing 1190’s array.

When I moved to KC out of college in ‘97, Entercom had just acquired those properties from Bonneville. Bonneville had owned KMBZ/KMBR for quite some time. In ‘91, KMBR became KLTH, and Bonneville acquired KCMO AM/FM from Gannett in either ‘93 or ‘94. It moved the Bonneville stations into 4935 Belinder while KY 102 and 61 Country moved into the old Gannett studios, which house Steel City’s properties today. Even with just four properties, those studios on Belinder seemed cramped to me. It quickly added WDAF 610 and KUDL 98.1, and sports station KKGM 1250 (the former WREN from Topeka) soon followed. After Entercom bought Sinclair's properties a couple years later, it moved the stations it was able to keep to Belinder while exiling those it couldn’t to the Mission Bank building off of Metcalf and Johnson Drive. The Mission Bank studios seemed a lot nicer to me, though I understand those were rented instead of owned. Cumulus left Mission Bank within the last couple years to move to Corporate Woods, near I-435 and Antioch. I couldn't imagine how cramped Belinder must have been when it added even more stations. Even with KCMO AM/FM going to the Mission Bank building, it went from having four stations there to having eight in just a few years. I always figured Johnny Dare would’ve thought that was a serious downgrade from what he had under Sinclair!

 

[Greg Goodfellow]

Back to the OP...it's sort of sad that these historic transmitter buildings are getting demolished. We read about the huge AM tower land being sold for huge profits. But typically on the tower land is the original transmitter building.



That's not unusual. Lots of companies built more modern offices around their original building. The historic "Quonset Hut" where Patsy Cline recorded her hits in the 1950s is embedded in what was for many years the Columbia Records building in Nashville. You can see the faint outline of the hut's curved roof from the parking lot in the back of the building.

These old transmitter buildings are small but stately, a vestige of an era when broadcasting was a service, and the technical plant required a staff of engineers to oversee and maintain the old tube transmitters. I've visited a few of these buildings and they're usually made of reinforced concrete. The term "brick sh*thouse applies. They make them look nice on the outside, but inside they're all industrial.



One by one these old transmitter buildings will all come down. These days an AM transmitter doesn't need an entire building.

In our area, a 1,000 watt daytime AM station built in 1953 has had several studios all over town, but the transmitter building, built of concrete block, still remains, but needs a lot of TLC. A sheet of plywood covering what was a window is in desperate need of replacement, and flaking paint everywhere suggests that other maintenance has been ignored. The original station building originally next door was torn down years ago and replaced with a funeral home. Since they're no longer next door to the transmitter building, out of sight, out of mind, perhaps.