The radio community has been buzzing this week over the announced sale of KCOH. The station has been on the market for a couple of years and it looks like the sale will mean the demise of the programming.
J.R. Gonzales of the Chronicle's Bayou City History Blog has dug out a couple dozen pictures from the newspaper files for an article and a great pictorial of the station's history since it became Black-owned and programmed.
(I wish I had access to those archives!).
The Ratings are in!
KNUZ was still doing quite well vs. KILT with it's 250 watts; second place ain't bad. Note only two FMs showed up.
Thanks to John B. Hill, an engineer at KILT from 1960-1964, for sharing these. John has shared some other memorabilia from that era and filled in some facts and anecdotes about the McLendon operation, both AM and FM. See the KILT Staff Directory from this era here; there more published on this blog in the near future.
Twenty years ago an employee of KTRH, Philip H. Boudreaux III, produced a history of Houston Radio: The First Sixty Years. The 33 page essay is fully annotated and was based on newspaper research and personal interviews, particularly concerning events in the more recent years. I think what I have is only a draft, judging by editing marks and simple typos; there are some facts stated which are in conflict with some information I came up with but Boudreaux also uncovered some important facts that I had not been able to find.
I'll be incorporating this material in articles already posted on this blog, giving credit to Boudreaux, but here are a few of the more significant findings:
In my article on the launch of Alfred P. Daniel's WCAK I reported that Anna Clyde Plunkett had claimed in 1955, commenting on Daniel's death, that she had participated in the first radio broadcast in Houston on Daniel's station but failed to give the date or what station. Boudreaux reports the concert was on May 22, 1922, on Daniel's WCAK, not his earlier amateur stations, and it was one of the Houston Post-Dispatch sponsored concerts. From this we know that this was certainly not the first radio broadcast in Houston. Hurlburt-Still's WEV had commenced weather broadcasts on April 12 on 485 meters and the Post-Dispatch had reported on May 11 on a broadcast of an entertainment program on 360 meters on WEV which clearly was not the first by that station.
Plunkett had apparently actually claimed to be the first soloist to perform on Houston radio but even that claim does not hold up. David Westheimer, Radio-TV editor of the Post in 1955 had headlined the story 'First Performer Tells of Initial Broadcast.'
Regarding the decision of Ross Sterling, Sr., to start a Post-Dispatch radio station, it's been reported in several sources that it was his son Ross, Jr., who was interested in radio and talked his dad into taking action. Boudreaux says Sterling had two sons, Walter and Ross, Jr., and both were interested in radio and convinced their dad to buy the 500 watt Westinghouse Electric transmitter. Additionally, when the decision had been made to proceed with the station after a period of mourning over the death of Ross, Jr., Sterling turned to his son Walter to name the station. He picked the call letters KPRC to stand for Kotton Port, Rail Center. I don't know that anyone has claimed for sure who picked the call letters though I had speculated it was Daniel's suggestion.
Later in the decade when the Post-Dispatch took over the Fort Bend School Board's KGHX and moved it to Houston to be a sister station to KPRC, Sterling again turned to his son Walter to pick some call letters. He chose KTLC, to stand for K-The Largest City, referring to Houston as the largest city in Texas.
These facts came out in an interview with Walter Sterling in 1982.
Regarding the naming of KTRH in 1929, it would seem to be self evident: Jesse Jones owned the Rice Hotel and the new radio station which was to have studios in the hotel, but according to an interview with John T. Jones, it wasn't quite that direct. The elder Jones had originally wanted to put the radio station in the Houston Chronicle building but met with resistance from the paper's editor, W. O Huggins, so Jones turned to his hotel manager who declared he would be happy to provide space for the station provided it was irretrievably tied to the hotel. Hence the call letters KTRH which were announced as meaning K - The Rice Hotel.
Everything I have seen has identified Tilford Jones, head of Harris County Broadcast, owners of KXYZ, as Jesse Jones nephew. Boudreaux identifies him as a cousin.
My thanks again to Charlie Pena of Clear Channel Radio for sharing this material with me.
Chris Huff of the DFW Radio Archives has compiled a list of the first 40 AM stations on the air in Texas.
As followers of this blog already know, none of the first ones in Houston survived but there is one Houston station on the list, KTRH, which started in Austin, of course.
Most of the new station activity in Houston in the 1960s would take place on the FM dial; it was to be as active an era on FM as the 1920s or 1940s had been on AM. By mid-October, 1960, there were already two new FMs on the air as KARO-FM took to the air at 94.1 megacycles the weekend of the 15th and 16th. There will be more about this in the FM Chronology. Normally the launch of a new station would have had the radio industry buzzing but not only was there little publicity regarding the launch of KARO, industry types and many others were busy talking that weekend about the news of a Vice Squad raid at the offices of KILT. It was front page news in the Chronicle on the 15th with a follow-up story on Sunday. It seems the HPD Vice Squad had gotten a tip there was an office pool at KILT and, equipped with a betting slip provided by the anonymous tipster and a marked $1 bill, moved in on Friday afternoon. An undercover officer entered the station at 500 Lovett Blvd. and said he was there to place a bet. The slip and money were taken by a young copy writer, whose name is omitted here to protect the innocent. The officer then went back outside and motioned to the uniformed officers to move in. The copy writer was promptly arrested and just as promptly fainted.
The problem seemed to be that bets had been taken from persons outside the employ of KILT; one account alleged an employee of Air Call, which was located across the lobby from the KILT offices and I believe co-owned, had been allowed to place a bet the previous week and the young woman said she thought the man was an employee of one of the other companies in the building; she also had reportedly commented after the undercover officer left that she didn’t think they should be taking bets from non-employees. Felony bookmaking charges were filed; the $1000 bond was posted by the station.
Station Manager Bill Weaver was indignant. The next day Mayor Lewis Cutrer called Weaver to apologize for the raid and both men agreed the Vice Squad should have better things to do, but the Vice Squad officer who set up the raid, Capt. H. L. Ellisor, and the Police Chief both backed the action. The total netted in the raid was 11 betting slips and $9.00 (two of the bettors had not anted up). Weaver observed the Vice Squad must have been very busy the previous week during the World Series as there had been rumors of $1000 betting pools in town; Ellisor said no raids had taken place because no complaints had been filed. Weaver also said he had been told there was a betting pool at HPD the previous week.
In mid-December the Chronicle’s Open Mike column published an article headed ‘Dial a Station and Talk, Talk, Talk’ noting a growing trend of telephone talk shows on the radio. KXYZ had launched an evening program called Expressions a few months earlier and was so pleased with the results, plans were already being made to add more talk shows after the Christmas season, according to GM Cal Perley, but this did not come to pass. A change of ownership in a few months led to cancellation of Expressions and dismissal of some employees; the show would resurface later on KFMK-FM.
KTRH had noted the trend and launched a call-in program called ‘At Your Service’ which took calls on a wide range of topics. The Chronicle article opined that eventually talk, talk, talk might become so pervasive there’d be little room for rock ‘n roll on the radio. It took the rise of FM radio and a couple of other factors but that prediction, which must have seemed highly unlikely at the time, eventually came true.
Whether Expressions was the first listener participation talk show in Houston is not known and the Chronicle did not mention any other local stations that had latched on to the trend.
In the same column the Chronicle reported that KNUZ program director Ken Grant was talking about an unusual success story for that time of year, an album doing a brisk business and drawing lots of listener calls that had nothing to do with Christmas. The Humorous World of Justin Wilson had been aired on both KNUZ and sister station KQUE-FM and there were reports it was breaking sales records.
On March 19, 1961, formal transfer of ownership of KTHT to Winston-Salem Broadcasting from Texas Radio was completed. General Manager Sam Bennett resigned and the new owners unveiled a new moniker for the station, Red Carpet Radio. Within a few months the station would become known as Demand Radio 79.
On May 1, 1961 KRCT changed call letters to KIKK, again proclaiming the switch in a big ad in the Chronicle. A story in the TV section of the Chronicle the previous day helpfully noted the DJs would refer to the station as ‘kick,’ ‘for kicks.’ Owner Leroy Gloger told the Chronicle reporter the change came about because research had shown call letter confusion among listeners. By that time, the station had studios in the Montague Hotel at 804 Fannin at Rusk as well as in Pasadena.
According to Roy Lemons, who worked for KIKK during most of the 1960s as Sales Manager, the KIKK call letters were the idea of a San Antonio country broadcaster A.V. 'Bam' Bamford, who owned KBER in San Antonio. Bamford knew that the calls had been dropped by a California station. He also came up with the "boots" symbol over a drink at the Montague. The logo was designed by Don Newcomer, a Heights resident who charged $250 for the soon-to-be-famous KIKK design.
This ad in May, 1961, just used block lettering for the call letters; it is not known yet just when the familiar boots came to be used for the ‘K’s.
...of a Houston radio listener. Sunday and Monday, December 5th and 6th, 1937.
Note Frank Tilton, the blind pianist from the early days of KPRC, on KTRH at 6:15pm Monday and Vox Pop with Dr. I.Q. that evening at 9pm.
Note also Don McNeill's Breakfast Club on KXYZ, Monday morning at 8am. KXYZ had just joined the NBC Blue Network in August.
Just two and a half months after the launch of KNUZ, KCOH signed on at 1430 kc. The station ran teaser ads in the papers leading up to the first day of broadcasting which was May 5, 1948. The ads invited listeners to "Take the One Day Listening Test." The station referred to itself as Radio Penthouse and it was intended to be a ‘good music’ station; it’s studios were located in penthouse on top of the M&M building at Number 1 Main Street, now the University of Houston, Downtown. The stories announcing the new station in the Post and Chronicle emphasized there would be no hillbilly music and no noisy commercials.
Manager John Pace said not only would the station steer clear of hoedown-type music, it would lean toward the classics and try some new approaches in Houston radio. The programming would be 80% music, 20% news, sports, and public affairs. The music would range from classics through semi-classics and light concert to popular dance music with no hot jazz or jump tunes. There would be long periods of music uninterrupted by commercials and commercials would be presented softly, with just voice and background music. Starting the day with ‘light’ music, the programming would build to a 40 minute program dedicated to the Houston Symphony at midday.
It seems likely the station took its programming ideas from former Houstonian Lee Segall who may have been the first licensee. Segall had relocated to Dallas the previous year after failing to get an AM/FM license combo in Houston and put KIXL-AM/FM on the air, pioneering the Good Music format. KCOH also had a license for an FM station but the station was never put on the air.
It’s been concluded that KCOH was a classical station for the first few months but that is not apparent from the program listings; it appears to be what would come to be known as an easy listening station and was referred to in news stories subsequently as a ‘good music’ station. Easy listening or good music stations in those days frequently included ‘light classical pieces’ in their library and did so into the early 60s. It’s also true that KCOH, like most stations, was block programmed. Reading the radio guides in the papers in those days, one would frequently find scheduled classical music programs on any of the stations. NBC had it’s own symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini, perhaps the most famous conductor of the era. On just one day in 1950, the Chronicle’s daily Radio Guide pointed out Houston listeners were to have the choice of a broadcast of a live Houston Symphony concert on KPRC, a transcribed concert of the Oklahoma City Symphony on KCOH, and a live concert by the New York Philharmonic on KTRH-FM.
The call letters KCOH have been said to stand for “City of Houston,” “Call of Houston,’ ‘Classical over Houston,’ and ‘Kilo Cycles over Houston.” Call of Houston, Inc., was the name of the company, headed by William A. Smith, K.C. Hughes and Ed Hoffman. John H. Pace, formerly of Wired Music, Inc., Houston’s first piped-in music service, was general manager and Phil Harlow, formerly of KXYZ, was program director.
KCOH was sold to Robert C. Meeker in 1953 and became the first Black owned radio station in Texas and perhaps only the third in the nation. KCOH is the second oldest AM radio station in Houston still using its original call letters. It is now a 24 hour a day operation.
On November 15, 1948, KFRD, Rosenberg, signed on at 980 kc. According to the city history on the Rosenberg website, the principals were Mart Cole, Sr., Wendell Shannon, D.I. Lowem, Walter Shult and Julius Junker. The city website gives the year as 1947. This station has featured country music, polka and Hispanic programming over the years. It currently is KRTX is a Tejano station.
...of a Houston radio listener. From the Houston Post, Wednesday, February 18, 1948, the first day of broadcast of KNUZ, 1230.
The Press had been one of the applicants for a station on 1230 kc before the War and was one of the parties notified when the FCC reopened the license hearing on the petition of Roy Hofheinz in 1944, but the Press’ representative was off to the War and didn’t receive the notice until several months later. After getting on the air, Hofheinz formed a close working relationship with the Press and his new station apparently; he did the lion’s share of his advertising for KTHT in the Press and the paper covered station activities much more closely than it reported on the doings of the other stations in town - of course, both the Chronicle and the Post had their own broadcast outlets in KTRH and KPRC. News of KTHT activities, including the use of the first wire recorder, the GI house project, extended coverage of election returns, the cruising radio studio, KTHT-FM and others were frequently the topics of front page stories, or, if not warranting that much coverage, usually would be above the fold on page 2.
KATL had signed on just after the disastrous explosion at Texas City in 1947 when all the Houston stations distinguished themselves with their coverage, and by late that year had formed its own close working relationship that would give the Press a very large voice on the Houston radio dial and deepen KATL’s coverage of the news.
The KATL - Press agreement was headlined center page on page one on December 2, 1947, heralded as a public service of the two entities. 'See it in the Press, Hear it on KATL' was the catchphrase. ‘Press Time’ was to be broadcast 5 times daily, 3 times on Saturdays and twice on Sundays, live from the Press building at Chartres and Rusk. It would feature freshly gathered news, on-the-scene broadcasts with coverage by both KATL and the Press, ‘flavorsome’ special broadcasts, covering as many interests as the Press did itself, and special sponsorship of certain events such as a spelling bee, election returns, etc. It was described as a public service effort strictly, not for business purposes.
The broadcasts would be 10 to 15 minutes in length except for one scheduled on weekdays from 2:30 to 3pm (the Press was an afternoon paper) which would involve foreign correspondents, Washington reporters, comic strip artists, experts in fashion and cooking, chit-chat with entertainers and more. Saturday programs would be for ‘the kids.’ Sports Editor Clark Nealon, who later went on to be Sports Editor of the Post, would also contribute as would the Press’ popular columnists, Carl Victor Little, Andy Anderson, the Press’ Rambler, and The Stroller, Sigman Byrd.
A lavish reception was held at the Rice Hotel for both staffs to get acquainted and reported on also in the Press.
KATL for its part produced a brochure about the new alliance and blog reader Andrew Brown has shared some images from that brochure which show the announcers and engineers of KATL as well as some glimpses of equipment and the Press setup. I’m very grateful to Andrew for sharing this material.
I have a couple of captures of my own from the newspaper article which I will get around to uploading but they are not nearly as good as these.
Less than 3 weeks after KLEE signed on KNUZ came on the air on 1230 kc at 6am on February 18, 1948. The station had first been applied for in December, 1946, and approved in April, 1947, pending the move of KTHT off of 1230.
A story in the Post the previous day outlined the staff and that KNUZ was to be a local station and had no plans to try to affiliate with any network. The story referred to KNUZ as Houston’s seventh radio station and Dave Morris, who was general manager of Veterans Broadcasting Co. and one of the four partners who owned the new station, told the Houston Chronicle in an interview at the time of his retirement in 1994 that there were eight, but both were wrong. The Radio Guide printed in the Post February 18, 1948, included KLEE, KTRH, KTHT, KPRC, KNUZ, KXYZ, and KATL, plus KPRC-FM, KTRH-FM, KOPY-FM and KXYZ-FM. It might also have included KREL and KRCT, Baytown, for a total of thirteen.
Station personnel were detailed in the story; Biff Collie, who came to KNUZ from San Antonio to serve as sports reporter, later did mornings on KATL, KLEE and KPRC and hosted a certain up and coming singer from Memphis by the name of Presley at the Grand Prize Jamboree a few years later. The station was never a news station; Morris told the Chronicle the call letters were chosen because two of the owners had been newsmen. Morris had been Assistant General Manager of KTBS, Shreveport, before coming to Houston and had also worked at KTBC, Austin. Max Jacobs had been the Washington correspondent for the Post, Douglas Hicks had been with the Press. The other partner was Tom Harling. All were veterans.
Chuck Dunaway, a disc jockey who worked at several Houston area radio stations in his 40 plus year career, wrote in his The Way I Remember It the KNUZ studios were originally located in the Scanlon Building at 405 Main Street, taking up most of the 9th floor, then moved to 4701 Caroline, the former home of the Jewish Community Center.
According to Dunaway, Al McKinley and Webb Hunt crossed the street from KATL (literally) to work at KNUZ when KATL became KYOK. Hunt, with his trademark dark glasses, was to spend several decades at KNUZ and its sister station KQUE-FM. Dunaway also remembered the all night DJ in the early 50s, “Tiny Ted Jones, the Terror of the Turntables.” In 1950, Houston radio legend Paul Berlin arrived from Memphis to work at KNUZ.
KNUZ took over the 1230 frequency from KTHT, which moved to 790 kc as of 5:30pm on the 17th and increased power to 5000 watts. The station was authorized to operate 24 hours a day but only planned on an 18 hour day (KTHT had been a 24 hour operation since August, 1946). The Post ran stories on the move and KTHT ran ads advising listeners of the move, also. KTHT had moved into new studios at Jefferson and Brazos where the Crowne Plaza now sits after operating for several months in temporary quarters in the old South End Christian Church on Main in late 1947. Half a million dollars was spent on the new studios plant and 4 new towers on Miller road near the San Jacinto Monument and KNUZ took over the old KTHT transmitter site on Ennis St., on the near East side. There was a glass wall in the new KTHT studios so motorists on Jefferson could see programs in progress.
Before applying to move KTHT to 790 kc and increase it’s power, Roy Hofheinz had told some friends of his plan and suggested they apply for his old frequency. Hofheinz didn’t want his competitors to get their hands on the frequency when he vacated it. According to his biographer Hofheinz convinced the FCC and the owners of the new station to let him simulcast KTHT on both stations for 24 hours before the move but according to the papers the overlap was just over 12 hours. Every time they cracked the mike the KTHT announcers advised listeners on 1230 kc to move down the dial to 790 to continue listening to their favorites on KTHT. The new owners of KNUZ were not pleased; they were afraid they weren’t going to have any listeners left by the time they launched.
The story of Hofheinz’ lengthy struggle to win approval to move KTHT to a new frequency and boost power will be told in another post. The article in the Chronicle mentioned above was entered into the Congressional Record by former Representative Jack Fields.
On the same day KNUZ hit the airwaves the Post also carried a notice that the KLEE program director, Winthrop Sherman, formerly of the Mutual Broadcasting System, who had been on the job since October, had resigned. The station had been on the air only since January 31.
If KATL had been a something of a stealth entry onto the Houston radio scene the next new AM station in town was to make quite a splash. In early 1946, Houston businessman W. Albert Lee had decided to make a foray into broadcasting. He received a permit in May 1947 and got his station on the air Saturday, January 31, 1948, timed to coincide with the opening of the Fat Stock show that year. Studios were to be in the San Jacinto Hotel, which was being remodeled, but work went faster on a similar project at the Milby at Travis and Texas and the studios wound up there. Lee put a 62 foot Translux animated sign on the exterior of the hotel, the first of its kind in Houston, a smaller version of the famous one in Times Square in Manhattan. As he had done with 2 of his hotels and was to do with his television station less than a year later, Lee used his name for the call letters. KLEE operated at 610 kc with 5000 watts from a 4 tower array. Hilton Waldo Hearn, Jr.'s 1971 Masters Thesis on Lee placed the transmitter on Airline Drive but a Chronicle story placed it on the Dallas Highway. John B. Hill, an engineer at KILT from 1960-1964 who started as an engineer at the transmitter says it was on West Rd., just west of I-45, across 45 from Aldine High, which sits near the intersection of Airline at West. Lee still owned the station at the time of his death in late November, 1951.
As part of the build-up to the launch of the station, Lee turned on the Translux sign two weeks before broadcasting began, staging a big ceremony. The sign was on the Texas Avenue side of the Hotel, facing Jesse Jones’ Rice Hotel but was to be turned off at 10:30 every night. There were big stories in the newspapers almost every day in the week leading up to the launch.
KLEE received front page coverage in the Saturday morning Houston Post on the day the station signed on and the station placed a full page ad concerning the opening ceremonies scheduled for 5pm. The ad included pictures of station personnel and facilities, but has been difficult to reproduce from the microfilms or I would post it here. Gene Autry and his entire troupe were to be on hand, as well as actor Michael O’Shea, Virginia Mayo, Wild Bill Elliot, Albino Torres and his Orchestra and others. There was to be a special live, remote broadcast from the Fat Stock show, and, in the midst of all that, coverage of that day’s election returns on a vote on the subject of zoning for the city of Houston (the zoning proposal lost - duh).
Lee had purchased an 8000 disc library and subscribed to a music transcription service but the first song aired on the new station was performed live: Gene Autry's Cass County Boys played 'The Eyes of Texas,' punctuated by pistol shots and cries of 'Yippee,' to open the ceremony and Autry later sang his signature song ‘I’m Back in the Saddle Again,’ the first song sung on 610. All the show business people stuck around for more appearances on the station for a couple of days, with live broadcasts in one of the big studios starting at 6:10pm, open to the public.
Lee received congratulatory messages from many of his famous and rich friends plus his radio competitors, including Jesse Jones, the Hobbys, Glenn McCarthy and Coke Stephenson. Fred Nahas, who was to become a Houston radio legend in his own right, wrote that he was most impressed that Lee had four ministers pray at the dedication ceremony, a Rabbi, a Catholic priest, a Greek Orthodox priest, and a Methodist minister. Nahas had just launched Houston’s first Muzak-like piped-in music service.
The Chronicle ran a full length column in the Sunday paper on the launch under the headline 'Crowds view KLEE official opening here.' Ray Bright, Commercial Manager of KTRH across the street, had been hired as General Manager. WInthrop 'Bud' Sherman of WOC, Washington, DC, and the Mutual Radio Network had been hired as Program Director. He had also worked at KNOW, WBAP, WACO and KMOX. Paul Huhndorff was picked as the chief engineer; he would go on to put KLEE-TV on the air for Lee in less than a year and stay with the TV station when it was sold to KPRC. The chief announcer was Charles Rashall whom the Chronicle article said 'formerly was heard on coast-to-coast shows originating in the film capital.' Lee's biographer credits Lee with hiring a young Dick Gottlieb out of Texas A&M to do play-by-play of high school football games on Thursday and Friday nights for $25 per game, thus giving Gottlieb and entry into Houston radio. He was to go on to serve as an off-camera announcer on KLEE-TV and stay with the television station when it was sold, becoming known as 'Mr. Television' in Houston for the first decade and a half of Houston TV. However, the claim has also been made that Gottlieb first worked in Houston for Roy Hofheinz' KTHT.
Lee was apparently pretty difficult to work for. He went through 3 program directors in 3 years with Sherman leaving just 3 weeks after the station signed on. Ted Hills, who had been program director of early Houston radio station KFVI in the 1920s and KTHT in the mid 40s was one of the PDs. Without a network affiliation the station had to rely on local advertising sales completely for revenue. According to his biographer Lee attempted to motivate his sales staff but instead drove them away. He was known to fire announcers on the spot for an on-air comment he didn’t like.
Even before KLEE was on the air, Lee had traveled to the East coast, negotiating for talent to appear at the Rodeo, and been exposed to television. He came back to Houston determined to put a television station on the air and filed for a permit on October 8, 1947. The announcement of his intentions appeared in Television Magazine in November, 1947, and that same month in Houston Magazine. Approval by the FCC was to take only 3 months with approval on January 30, 1948, the day before his radio station signed on, although Lee apparently didn’t get the news for a couple of days. Studios were to be in the Milby Hotel with the radio station and the transmitter on South Post Oak near the Pin Oak Horse stables. KLEE-TV was to sign on New Year’s Day, 1949, Houston’s first television station, on Channel 2. There's more on KLEE-TV in the TV section on the sidebar.
The year following Lee’s death, KLEE-AM was sold to Gordon and B.R. McLendon’s Trinity Broadcasting of Dallas who changed the call letters to KLBS and made it a part of his Liberty Broadcasting System. McLendon announced plans to move the headquarters of the network to Houston and use KLBS as the flagship station, according to McLendon’s biographer, but they fell apart when McLendon had to give up the baseball game recreations which formed the backbone of the network programming. According to the History of KLIF website, McLendon owned the station from 1952 to 1954 and repurchased it to flip it to KILT in May, 1957. The studios were still located in the Milby Hotel when the call letters changed, but later moved to 500 Lovett Blvd. in the Montrose area where they stayed for almost 40 years. KILT has been the call on 610 ever since 1957. The station was a Top 40 station for many years and flipped to Country in 1981, then to Sports around 1995.
When I first read of the supposed intentions of moving the headquarters of Liberty to Houston I was skeptical. I have always thought of McLendon as a Dallas broadcaster and it was difficult to even imagine him abandoning Dallas and given his penchant for promotional hype, I thought he was probably just blowing smoke. However it becomes more believable when considering that, according to McLendon's biographer, Ronald Garay, Houstonian Hugh Roy Cullen had invested $1,000,000 in Liberty in August, 1951, to help prop it up. Cullen was considered by some the richest man in Texas at the time and had been expanding his influence politically. He had asked an aid to look into investing in Liberty but canceled the due diligence after just one meeting with Gordon. The two men had similar political ideologies and found they admired each other very much. Cullen extended another loan of $175,000 the next year as the network was collapsing and was one of the major creditors suing for a share of the assets after the collapse (the other was B. R. McLendon).
The Houston Post typically found a way to put it's own radio station on the front page during all the build up to the launch of KLEE. On Thursday, January 29, a front page story pointed out KPRC would be celebrating 20 years of being an NBC affiliate the next Thursday with a special concert at the Music Hall and on Friday, January 30, another front page story advised riders of the Houston Transit Company buses that they would soon be among the first in the nation to hear music as they rode the buses. In an experimental program sponsored by KPRC-FM, special receivers would be installed in buses to allow reception of KPRC-FM’s signal (and presumably no others). The receivers were eventually installed in 250 buses and the ‘experiment’ lasted until 1950.
The 1979 Broadcasting Yearbook gave August 1, 1947, for the launch of KIOX, Bay City, but that appears to be far off. A CP was granted in March, 1946, and the station was apparently on the air by the end of July of that year as a 1000 watt daytimer on 1110 kilocycles. It then moved to 1270 kc and became a full time station in November, 1947. The station is no longer in existence. For more on the launch and history of this station, go here.
KTLW, Texas City, was first licensed on November 1, 1947. A construction permit had been issued just weeks after the Texas City explosion. The original owner was John Long, doing business as Texas City Broadcasting Service. Long also had an interest in KIOX, Bay City. KTLW operated on 920 kc with 1000 watts, daytime only. The transmitter and studios were located north of 146 and west of Logan Ave. originally but FCC records show the address changed several times in the early years. After the Showboat Theater was rebuilt in 1949 (it had been destroyed in the explosion in April, 1947), KTLW established studios there. The theater was also owned by Long. In 1949, the station filed for a permit to increase hours of operation to unlimited and reduce power to 250w but withdrew the application days later before the FCC could act. Long sold the station to Roy Henderson of Henderson Broadcasting as of June 24, 1980. Robert Miller, VP and GM of the station announced a change of call letters to KYST and a change of format to adult contemporary and oldies with the intention of offering a service to the metropolitan Houston area while continuing to serve the bay area. Henderson requested and received permission from the Zoning Commission to build a new facility in the 5700-5800 blocks of FM 1764. In April, 1981, Henderson was granted a permit by the FCC to increase hours of operation to unlimited, using 5000 watts daytime and 1000 watts nighttime. The station subsequently was sold to Hispanic Broadcasting Corp. and still operates as KYST. Information about KTLW has been very difficult to discover; it received only scattered mentions in the Galveston Daily News over the years, mostly program notes about individual programs.
Tri-Cities Broadcasting announced on October 31, 1947, that it planned to put the Tri-Cities area’s second station on the air by the 10th of November but it was just over a month before it hit the airwaves. The original calls were KREL and it was licensed to Pelly as a full-time station on 1360 kilocycles with 1000 watts. The owners had explained the call letters referred to Robert E. Lee High School. Virgil G. Evans was the GM, having worked before at WMTC, Ocala, Florida. Harold Rench was to be the Chief Engineer; he was from Battle Creek, MI, and had worked at WSAM, Saginaw. Other staff members included Byard Sooy of Troy, AL (WTBF) who would cover sports, a strong point for the station; Bob Postner of Chicago (WBAU); Robert T. Nolan of E. Liverpool, OH, who had worked at KXLA, Pasadena, CA, and who would become station manager in a couple of years; George Vance of Detroit who had worked at KPRC; Bill Bates of Oklahoma City who had worked at WBBZ, Ponca City; and Harold Orton, a Lee College Student who wanted to get in to radio. The station would operate from 6a to 11pm from new studios on Decker Drive ‘at the InterUrban Crossing,’ near the Humble Refinery.
According to a post on ourbaytown.com, KREL played Rhythm and Blues but like most stations in that era that were not network affiliated, it was block programmed. Houston radio legend Dickie Rosenfeld got his first job in radio at KREL, doing sales and disc jockeying a country music show as Cowboy Dickie, before moving on to work at KPRC and then KILT. Another well known personality was Marvin Daugharty of Highlands, the morning show host, known as ‘The Deacon.’ He had studied at the National Radio Institute at Rice and also at the University of Kentucky, was also on the engineering staff at KREL and helped to put KLEE-TV on the air plus stints at KTHT and KRCT.
The station had a Fire Fighters Club for kids and also reminded teens not to forget the Three Rs: Rhythm, Records and Requests, daily at 6pm.
The station signed on with a special 2 hour program at 7pm on December 2nd. Regular broadcasting started on the 3rd. When Pelly and Goose Creek were consolidated in the newly incorporated Baytown in 1948, the city of license changed to Baytown. The station at 1360 has seen a number of call letter changes over the years including KWBA and KBUK; currently it is KWWJ, a Black gospel station.
The Houston papers did not include listings for suburban stations until the 50s.
ETA: Google Street View image of the KWWJ facilities, still operating out of the original KREL building. The garage structure, which possibly houses a remote unit, has been added. Decker Drive/Loop 330 has been widened considerably; it is now a multi-lane, elevated expressway with frontage roads so the building sits much closer to the road than it used to.
NOTE: The Robert T. Nolan of E. Liverpool, OH, one of the original staffers at KREL, Baytown, became much better known in Houston radio circles and to listeners as Tim Nolan, one half of the long-running Tim and Bob morning show on KPRC.
UPDATED 2/12/14 WITH ADDITIONAL DETAILS ABOUT KTLW, TEXAS CITY.
Note: The article previously published as The 1940s - Part 4 - KATL has been retitled Part 5 to keep the articles in chronological order.
The only new stations to come on the air in Houston in 1946 were to be FM outlets but there was a lot of activity behind the broadcasting scene as the country and the industry continued the transition back to peacetime activities.
It had been reported in December, 1945, that a group calling itself Veterans Broadcasting had been formed to put Houston’s 5th radio station on the air on the 1230 frequency that was to be vacated by Texas Star’s KTHT; the application was contingent on approval of KTHT’s move. This was a group of Hofheinz associates that had been privately informed of his intentions so they could move quickly on the opening. Apparently the name Veterans had been chosen because all the principals were veteran broadcasters; the call letters KNUZ were to be used but the station was not going to be a news outlet, the calls referred to the fact that a couple of the principals had been newsmen.
One month later, on January 18, 1946, the Press reported not only on Veterans’ application but also the application of Hofheinz to move KTHT to 790 and an application for a station to operate on 610 kilocycles with the call letters KHTN.
The March roundup of FCC actions and filings reported in the Press on the 16th included news that hotelman W. Albert Lee had filed a competing application for a station on 610 kc, veteran Houston broadcaster and advertising man Lee Segall had filed an application for 1230, H. C. Coeblain and San Jacinto Broadcasting had filed for a station on 1470, Fred Weber, E.A. Stephens and William H. Talbot had filed for a station on 1590 and Radio Broadcast Associates, a group mainly based in San Antonio consisting of Eugene J. Roth, Jack. L. Pink and James M. Brown, had filed for a permit for a 250 watt station on 1180. Roth had put a station on the air in San Antonio in 1927 in the back of his auto repair shop on Main and taken the call letters KGRC, meaning Kome to the Gene Roth Company. Two years later someone had pointed out to him that he needed a government license to do what he was doing so he wrote to the Commerce Department and reported himself. According to Richard Schroeder in Texas Signs On, Herbert Hoover wrote back informing him that he was now authorized to operate a station in San Antonio with the call letters KGRC. That station had become KONO.
The Press reported on April 26 that Lee Segall had been granted an FM license; no other details were given. It is believed this license was transferred to the company that bought out Segall when he decided to relocate to Dallas and would have been a proposed KCOH-FM but never made it on the air. However, this was apparently the first license issued for an FM station in Houston in the upper (88-108mc) band.
The paper also noted W. Albert Lee’s and Roy Hofheinz’s applications and identified the head of the company seeking station KHTN on 610 kc as Robert T. Bartley, a nephew of powerful House Speaker Sam Rayburn. It was often speculated in coverage of this story that Bartley’s Washington connections made him a favorite to win the permit.
On May 4th, the Post reported its parent company, Houston Printing Co., had received a permit for an FM station to operate on 99.7 megacycles with 19.6 kilowatts. For more on this, see the FM Chronology. The paper also reported the FCC announced its intentions to hold competitive hearings on the applications of W. Albert Lee and KHTN, Inc. for a station on 610.
During May hearings resumed on Roy Hofheinz’s application to move KTHT to 790 kc and Lee Segall dropped a competing application for the frequency. It took almost 4 years for Hofheinz to win approval for his proposed move and brought him into conflict with one of the largest broadcasting outfits in the country; that story will be reported in a separate post.
On July 20 the Press reported the FCC had issued a permit the previous day for a new Houston AM station, the first since 1944. The operation was to be headed by Fred Weber of New Orleans, a former General Manager of the Mutual Broadcasting System who announced that no studio site had yet been selected. The station would take 10 months to get on the air and take the calls KATL. That is the subject of the next segment of this AM chronology.
Within 2 weeks Houston got a fifth radio station, Texas Star’s KTHT-FM. This is reported on in the FM Chronology. Later that month, the Chronicle reported that Metropolitan Houston Broadcasting Co. had filed for a permit for a full time station on 1060 kc to operate with 5 kW days and 1 kW nights. R.H. Rowley, Glen H. McLain, L.M Rice of Dallas and James A. Clements of Angleton were identified as the principals of the company. Clements was also a partner in Bay City Broadcasting which already held a permit for a station in Bay City, presumably KIOX.
In October a hearing on Radio Broadcast Associates of Houston’s application for a station was postponed. In its article the Press referred to Eugene L Levy, an error I believe, and gave the frequency sought as 1170 and the power as 1000 watts. The paper also noted that Roy Hofheinz and his partner, W.N. Hooper had amended their application for a station in New Orleans to request 50 kw rather than 5 and move the frequency from 1580 to 1540. This project of Hofheinz and Hooper was later scrapped due to cash flow problems.
Rounding out the action on the radio scene in Houston for 1946, the Press reported on November 2 an application had been filed for a Spanish language station in Houston to operate on 850 kc with 1000 watts daytime. Felix Morales had been trying since 1942 to get an AM station on the air in Houston; he would not succeed until May, 1950, with KLVL, 1480.
Just after the first of the year, both the Post and the Chronicle reported that Hofheinz and Hooper had filed for a station in San Antonio on 860. I believe this project did finally make it on the air.
For the Fall of 1945
I thought maybe the big numbers for KTRH and KXYZ in the mornings reflected, respectively, Arthur Godfrey, who had just gone national in April of 1945, and Don McNeill's Breakfast Club, which had been national (although maybe not in Houston all the time) since 1933. However, when I looked at the radio listings in my files closest to this date, in the Spring of 1947, I found the Breakfast Club on KXYZ at 9 am but Arthur Godfrey was on KTRH at 2 pm (30 minutes, with House Party - Art Linkletter? - at 3pm).
I have no idea what was responsible for the big numbers on KPRC in the afternoon.
I'm grateful to Chris Huff of the DFW Radio Archives for sharing this graphic.
The next AM station to come on the air in Houston was KATL, licensed to Texas Broadcasters and operating at 1590 kc with 1000 watts. The owners were William Harry Talbot of Houston and Fred Weber and E.A. Stephens of New Orleans, the latter two both associated with WDSU. Stephens was also an auto dealer in New Orleans and Weber had been General Manager of the Mutual Broadcasting System. King Robinson, Chief Engineer at KTRH, came over to serve as General Manager; William S. Newkirk ‘well-known announcer’ was program director. The station had been applied for in March and approved on July 20, 1946. It was scheduled to launch April 1, 1947, but was delayed, ironically, by engineering problems.
On the day KATL was supposed to launch the Chronicle carried a story about the city’s 6th radio station receiving approval - Veterans Broadcasting had received a permit to move onto the 1230 frequency when it was vacated by KTHT but that was not to be possible for months to come. The story also mentioned KATL expected to be on the air within 15 days. On the 13th of April the Chronicle ran yet another story about KATL, saying it would be on the air ‘this week’ and detailed the staff and programming. There was still a lot of concern about jobs for returning veterans and PD Newkirk had taken pains to make sure his entire staff was made up of veterans. Newkirk had served in the Army in the Pacific for three years. Johnny Edwards had been a navigator on a B-17. Larry Blieden served in the Marine Corps while John Wagner was with the First Armored Division and Sid Gervais was a radio technician in the Navy. Houston native Blieden (pronounced blee-din) later became known as actor Larry Blyden. Edwards, who used the nickname ‘the Old Redhead’ even very early in his career, was to spend many years in Houston radio including stints at KXYZ, KTHT and KPRC. This webmaster remembers Johnny Edwards on KPRC as having one of the most beautiful voices I ever heard in Houston radio.
The program staff was said to be taking a survey of Houstonians to determine what they wanted to hear on the radio and the programming would be guided by that survey. The station would operate 24 hours a day.
KATL finally hit the airwaves at 6pm, Monday, May 12, 1947, somewhat surreptitiously after all the stories weeks earlier. It went on the air by special authority, awaiting final FCC approval. The first evening’s programming included play-by-play of the Houston Buffs game that night with Fort Worth - a shutout by pitcher Al Papai - and the station quickly affiliated with Gordon McLendon’s Liberty Broadcasting System which offered mainly sports programming. In addition to sports, the station featured mostly Country music.
Studios were originally located on the mezzanine level of the State National Bank building at 412 Main. The transmitter and towers were on Post Oak Road near the Hempstead Highway.
The first mention of the new station in the Post occurred the next morning in a story in the Sports section which advised Buffs fans that their team had returned to the airwaves for the first time since 1938 the previous evening. Peerless Beer also ran an ad telling fans to tune in to the broadcasts, which were to be sponsored by Peerless, a brew from Jax.
The Chronicle gave the station more space in a news story in its Tuesday, May 13 edition and both papers added KATL to their daily printed radio schedules on Wednesday, May 14, 1947.
In the mid 1950s KATL became Houston’s second station programmed for Black listeners and changed call letters to KYOK. Presently the station on 1590 khz is KMIC, owned by Disney.
In less than 12 months, three more AM stations would sign on in Houston, plus several more in suburban communities, and the first four FMs would all be on the air. The competition for listeners and advertising dollars was going to get intense.
Note: Much of this article was previously published on this blog as an anniversary notice, "60 Years on 1590."
After the close of World War II, broadcasters expected a lot of interest in FM radio, which had been used by the armed forces during the war and was unavailable for private use, and Congress had taken steps during the war to set up the FM band between 42 and 50 megacycles, then moved it to 88 to 108 megacycles. Instead there was a flood of applications for new AM stations, manufacturers put a lot of inexpensive new AM radios on the market and the development of FM was delayed for many more years. Part of the reason for the cheap AM sets was the shortage of wood brought on by the war; radio manufacturers stopped building big console sets and turned instead to table top models using plastic and metal cabinets due to the shortage of wood. (The chronology of FM in Houston, at least in the early years, is being discussed in a separate series of articles on the sidebar).
Around the Houston-Galveston area, several smaller communities got AM radio stations by the late 1940s. On the 9th of April, 1946, the Chronicle reported that three officials of the Goose Creek Daily Sun had chartered Tri-Cities Broadcasting Co. And applied for a permit for a 250 watt station; no hearing had been set. The principals were Robert Matherne, Publisher, Fred Hartman, Managing Editor, and Sidney S. Gould, Advertising and Business Manager. Fred Hartman later served as Texas Highway Commissioner and the big suspension bridge on Highway 146 is named for him. This application was apparently later withdrawn or amended.
On August 31, 1946, a story in the Houston Post was headlined ‘Tri Cities Radio to take to the air within 3 months.’ A construction permit had been granted by the FCC on Friday, August 30, to Bay Broadcasting Co. for station KRCT, to operate on 650 kc with 250w. C.Q. Alexander, the 6 foot 9 and a half inch mayor of Goose Creek was one of the principals. According to the Post a site had not even been selected yet but the Chronicle story said all the equipment had been acquired and the station expected to be on the air by Thanksgiving. The Chronicle reported the calls were to be either KBAY or KOCT, the latter apparently a typo.
Galveston, came on the air at 1540 kc in May, 1947, but the actual first air date was Saturday, February 1. A CP had been granted in August, 1946. James W. Bradner, Jr., was president of Galveston Broadcasting Co.; he had been an engineer with the TVA, with the national war housing administration during the war and City Manager of Waco. The station was only a daytimer at first and was promoted as Galveston’s only 1000 watt clear channel station. It is still on the air on the original frequency with the original calls.
