KILT (KLEE, KLBS)
KILT, 610 AM
Original air date: January 31, 1948
Original owner: W. Albert Lee
Original Call letters: KLEE
Additional call letters used: KLBS (1952-1957), KILT (3/14/57)
Current owners: CBS
Website: SportsRadio 610
Photos at the Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin, relating to KLEE. Note: the three images supposedly of the KLEE transmitter site on the Dallas Highway are actually of the KLEE-TV site on South Post Rd. The main north/south road is South Post Oak, the main east/west road is what is now called Westpark. In the view looking east, you can see the downtown Houston skyline in the upper left corner; the diagonal street on the right side of that picture is Bissonnet. There is a problem, however, with the date; the photos are dated December 1947 but the FCC didn't even approve the KLEE-TV application until January 30, 1948.
There are photos in the Bob Bailey Collection at the Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin, relating to KLBS, but they have not been put online yet, apparently.
All posts on this blog labeled KILT (in reverse order as posted).
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2 comments:
Other posts indicate KLEE applied for a permit in Oct. 1947, and was granted in Jan 1948. The fact that an antenna existed in Dec. 1947 does not seem unreasonable to me. Perhaps the photos were part of the rushed approval process. There is an antenna seen in each of the 3 photos. You can trace that antenna in the aerial views at https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer at 29.72343,-95.45314 from 1953 to current (in 2012, it was joined by an adjacent, new antenna).
And see it as the orange/white antenna in a current Google Street View off Newcastle.
Thank you for bringing these issues up. I will certainly agree that it would not be unreasonable for the radio station antenna(s) to be in evidence in December 1947. The question is whether these pictures are of the radio site, off US 75 north, or the TV site, a couple of years later, between Post Oak Rd. and Newcastle, on the SW side of town.
I am now not sure that I was correct in saying these were of the TV site.
There are resources available now which weren't available online when I originally posted this. I will look into these and try to straighten this out and post again.
Bruce Williamson
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