Roy Hofheinz

I have mentioned before on this blog that there are two people I've learned about in researching this blog that I most would like to have known or worked for, Will Horwitz and Roy Hofheinz. This week, in celebration of the 100th birthday of Hofheinz, J. R. Gonzales' Bayou City History blog in the Chronicle has posted an essay with pictures about the Judge. Though one of the pictures dates back to the 1940s, there's not one mention in the text, pictures or comments about his broadcasting career; still it's an important look at his accomplishments.

For more on Hofheinz on this blog, click on the label below. For more on his broadcast operations, click on KTHT or KTHT-FM.

The KTHT GI House

Two of the biggest challenges facing the country at the close of World War II were jobs and housing for returning veterans. The Houston City Council declared housing to be the number one problem facing the city in 1946 and the issue was complicated by the shortage of building materials nationwide. Hundreds of vets were housed in trailers on the U of H campus and likewise at Texas A & M in College Station. The government stepped in with public housing projects aimed at veterans - almost a thousand units were announced for Houston - and private builders and developers advertised the suitability and affordability of their houses for veterans.

Roy Hofheinz, who always seemed to me to be as interested in the public service and public affairs aspects of radio as the entertainment and money-making end of the business, came up with a public service project to highlight the crisis: KTHT would undertake to build a house for a veteran's family within a fixed budget and time frame and document the process as it was underway.

Taking into account the effect of wartime inflation on housing prices a budget of $7000 was set and 30 days were allotted to find a site and complete the house but the project ran into problems right away. It took longer than anticipated to locate a suitable lot and the tract settled upon cost more than budgeted but a site was selected on Rice Boulevard in West University Place and representatives of veterans organizations took part in the ground breaking ceremonies on March 22, 1946.

As work progressed KTHT broadcast live from the scene twice daily, 200 half hour programs in all, entitled 'KTHT Builds a GI House' starting on March 19. The station refused to pay black market prices for scarce building materials but also did not want any sympathy donations or price breaks so an anonymous buyer made all the purchases. On a couple of occasions, necessary supplies could not be found at a fair price or at all and work was halted. Then the station would announce the reason for the delay and usually supplies would materialize in a while; again, the station insisted on paying full price in order to insure a fair representation of the difficulties a veteran would face if he or she were to undertake a similar project on their own.

Other media in town took notice of the ongoing effort. All three papers and all three existing radio stations sent reporters to cover the story which also was to garner national attention.

Owing to the materials delays and some weather delays, the project took a couple of weeks longer than anticipated and came in a couple of hundred dollars over budget but by the end of June, 1946, the completed house was sold for $7000, the advertised price, to Robert D. Niemeyer, an ex-Navy pilot and employee of Gulf Oil.

The Houston Chronicle, controlled by Hofheinz' political foe Jesse Jones, published an editorial praising KTHT and Hofheinz for calling attention to the housing problem. It was, according to Hofheinz' biographer, the beginning of a thaw in relations between the two men. City College of New York gave the station an award of merit for the most effective promotion of a public service program in 1946.

The KTHT GI House still stands, 65 years later, on Rice Boulevard, just a couple of blocks off of Weslayan in West U. There was a picture printed in the old Scripps-Howard Press showing the finished house with some KTHT personnel in front but it was not legible enough to use so I didn't even bother to get a copy of it and I am not able to describe all of the changes and alterations that have been made to the house over the years but it is obvious a half story has been added to the original one-story 1940s bungalow. The property originally budgeted at $7000 is now on the Harris County tax rolls appraised at over $450,000.

A KILT Footrace

J.R. Gonzales' Bayou City History blog in the Chronicle has posted a story about a big promotional event staged by KILT in the Astrodome in 1969 between Roy Hofheinz, owner of the Astros, and Mayor Louie Welch, a foot race to promote physical fitness and the KILT Jog Corps.

The Great Indoor Contest

It's a great little story about an event I never had heard of with pictures of Hudson and Harrigan and probably some other KILT staffers of that day.

KTHT's Cruising Radio Studio

Note: This article was edited and revised on October 17, 2009, to add two images and additional details, courtesy of some new finds by Andrew Brown.

Roy Hofheinz was an innovator. I’ve mentioned before that he was one of two individuals I’ve discovered in the course of this research project who most interested me. He made enormous contributions to the history of radio in this city, contributions which also had an impact elsewhere. One story I’ve wanted to tell for some time is the story of the KTHT Cruising Radio Studio.

There are only a couple of paragraphs in Edgar Ray’s bio of Hofheinz and I have wanted to find a picture and more details to do the subject justice. I have found the remodeled facilities for newspaper research at the Houston Public Library very unaccommodating, with no adequate lenses for scanning newspapers on the readers whose screens are uncomfortably high. Fortunately, though, Andrew Brown has shared clippings from his collection which provide a view of the entire unit plus glimpses of the interior of the unit and a very full description.






The first two images are from the station newsletter. I’m not sure which newspaper the clipping and the last photo is from, nor the exact date. From the typeface I’m tempted to guess the article appeared in the Houston Post but it would have been unusual for the Post to give such a glowing report on a competitor’s radio activities. The article mentions the unit was already en route to Philadelphia for the Republican convention which took place in June, 1948. The article in the station newsletter said the unit left Houston at dawn on June, 12.

One of Hofheinz’ hobbies was woodworking; he had hired an expert cabinetmaker, Stuart Young, to design and build the cabinetry for the KTHT studios and turned to him again for the building of the unit which the article says Hofheinz personally helped out on. Also involved was architect Bailey Swenson and two of the station engineers including O.B. Johnson.

The two-piece unit, built at a cost of $25,000, consisted of a gleaming, streamlined 26-1/2 foot trailer and a one ton truck that acted as power supply. The colors were green and silver. It could operate off a conventional 110 volt power source and public water hook-up but could also generate its own electricity to power the transmitting equipment and had a self-contained water supply.

There were sleeping quarters for four and dining accommodations for 10 (or 6 - both numbers in different parts of the article), including a complete galley that doubled as a photographic development studio. A powerful public address system, siren and powerful spotlights were included as well as a complete weather station with barometer, wind indicators and thermometers for use in covering hurricanes. The truck included storage facilities for remote equipment including the wire recorder and lengthy extension cords, complete parts and tube inventory, plus a monogrammed refrigerator and freezer. Hofheinz, always known as a generous host, would treat his guests at the conventions, in New York City and Washington to ‘Houston Fat Stock Show filet mignons and Texas shrimp,' served on monogrammed dinner ware with monogrammed napkins.

The three compartments in the trailer included an air conditioned and sound-proofed studio, a combination control room and galley with two shortwave transmitters, two transcription recorders plus playback turntables, 3 all-wave receivers, a consolette with 6 microphone channels, and a miniature control board, plus standard kitchen equipment including stove, refrigerator, cabinets and sink. The full-size beds in the sleeping quarters folded into sofas for daytime use; there was also an on-board bathroom. Walls of the studio and control room were decorated with photographs of KTHT’s news and public affairs involvement.

According to the article en route to Philadelphia the unit would stop in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Jackson and Washington, D.C. (Ray says the stop at D.C. took place on the way home). Between the conventions, the unit was taken to New York City and parked outside Rockefeller Center; network officials, celebrities and ordinary New Yorkers were invited on board for a tour. In D.C., the unit was parked outside the FCC and shown off to the Commissioners and staff and engineers.

At the conventions, runners went in and out of Independence Hall keeping in touch with convention activities; a leased line back to Houston was ‘kept pretty hot’ according to engineer Johnson, who also noted the unit attracted great attention. Interviews with important politicians were also transcribed for later broadcast. As at the UN sessions in San Francisco with the wire recorder in 1945, it was unprecedented for a ‘little radio station to be broadcasting as well as the networks.’

Back in Houston after the conventions, the unit was used to cover community events and major news stories (it had perhaps been inspired by the station's efforts to cover the Texas City explosion the previous year and a hurricane in 1946) and sent to schools all over the area to show students how radio programs were prepared and broadcast and recordings made.

Once again I am very grateful to Andrew Brown for sharing these finds.

A KTHT Gallery

A KTHT Rate Card, published just months after the station signed on.



I am grateful to Andrew Brown for sharing this piece of memorabilia.

Photos labeled KTHT in the Bob Bailey Collection at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. The personalities are Ted Nabors and Dick Gottlieb.

Photos labeled K.T.H.T. in the Bob Bailey Collection at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Roy Hofheinz.

At the time of this post those are the only photos in the collection that are online, apparently, but there are many more in the catalog.

Recent Comments

Most of the comments I receive on the blog are on older posts. I presume most regular readers of the blog have missed them if they're not on recent articles. I intend to add a 'Recent Comments' Module to the sidebar when I figure out how but in the meantime, I wanted to call special attention to a recent comment by Dene Hofheinz Anton, daughter of Judge Roy Hofheinz. The comment is appended to the article on KTHT, the 1940s, Part II, in the AM Chronology. It adds some good information to the history.

The First FM in Houston (and Texas)

The month of August, 1946, was a momentous time in Houston; the papers reported on major developments on the local scene frequently. Early in the month, General Foods announced it was buying the old Ford assembly plant on Navigation for its Maxwell House Coffee division. Ford had abandoned the plant before World War II and it had been used as a factory for the assembly of airplane parts during the war, then as a warehouse by Pepsi. Maxwell House had been based in Houston since 1907. (Incidentally, the facility still produces coffee but General Foods sold it just last year). About the same time, ads announced the establishment of a new Phillips 66 distributorship for Houston and South Texas. W.S. ‘Bud’ Adams had arrived in town from Oklahoma to head the Ada Petroleum Company.

The travel editors of the papers were gadding about the southern hemisphere, reporting on the wonders to be found by Houston travelers there. Houston International Airport, now known as Hobby, had been certified as an International Air Gateway earlier in the year and Pan Am was offering flights to Havana, Caracas and Santiago; Braniff and Chicago and Southern Airways were also planning direct flights.

Houstonian Howard Hughes, bedridden, recuperating from near-fatal injuries suffered in the crash of a plane he was test piloting, announced from his hospital bed he had invented a fully adjustable bed consisting of 16 separate platforms, each independently adjustable, and had his engineers build it for him to alleviate his misery.

On the broadcasting front The Settegast-Kopf Singers had passed the 500 mark of consecutive live, weekly concerts on KPRC, on their way to setting an all time record for such performances in Houston. Meanwhile the directors of the funeral home proudly announced they had taken delivery on the first new Cadillac hearses to be received since before the war.

Also on the broadcasting front Mrs. John Wesley Graham, who had appeared on the first Houston Post concert on WEV in May, 1922, was still going strong on the radio, presenting her 15th Annual Talent competition; she had a weekly program on KTRH.

And on August 22 Roy Hofheinz announced he had put the first FM station in Houston (and Texas) on the air.

Hofheinz had been too young to play a role in the launch of AM broadcasting in Houston but his biographer Edgar Ray says that that he was determined to make a mark in the industry and be the first to get an FM station on the air in Texas, even though he knew he had to make a dash from behind to do so. By the time he received a Construction Permit, subject to Engineering Conditions, there were already 6 other applicants with Construction Permits statewide including 2 in Houston. In addition, FM had been used by the military during the war and there was virtually no equipment available and copper wire was extremely difficult to obtain. But Hofheinz knew broadcasting equipment and knew what he needed, plus he was a wheeler-dealer. As he had with KTHT-AM earlier in the decade but with much greater urgency, he set to work to get his FM on the air, running up an $800 long distance bill in just 2 weeks, calling all over the country trying to locate equipment. His initial grant of a Construction Permit subject to engineering approval was issued by the FCC on August 2, 1946, the same day a Construction Permit was issued for KTRH-FM on 99.3 mc. The Chronicle bragged that KTRH-FM would be on the air in 6 weeks and be the first Houston FM but it would be 11 months before the station launched.

But as a result of his concerted efforts in just two weeks, on August 15, Hofheinz wired the FCC asking for permission to begin test broadcasts. By the afternoon of August 16th an antenna was on its way from New York on a Slick Air Lines cargo plane and a transmitter was on its way from New Orleans by truck and on the evening of August 17th, test broadcasts began from the KTHT studios in the Southern Standard Building at 711 Main. Then on August 22, just 3 weeks after the CP was issued, the Press and the Chronicle carried the announcement that KTHT-FM would begin regular broadcasts that afternoon on 98.5 megacycles, FM Channel 253, and would operate daily between 3 and 9pm.

KTHT-FM went on the air with only 250 watts but the Chronicle reported that would be upped to 1000 watts within a couple of weeks, boosted to 2000 watts by a double gain antenna. The license was for 250,000 watts and a new antenna was to be erected at 215 N. Ennis on the near east side.

There were only five radio stations in Houston at the time and Roy Hofheinz owned two of them but between the two he put out only 500 watts.

Initially all programming was transcribed but there were plans to originate live programming on the FM; none of the programming duplicated KTHT-AM.

Hofheinz told the papers not only was KTHT-FM the first FM in Houston and Texas but was also the first FM anywhere to be sustaining. Programming was sold in one hour blocks with sponsors receiving one 60 second commercial per quarter hour. Business Manager Ted Hills said 5 sponsors had already signed on, a department store, a bank, 2 radio distributors and a public utility. There were estimated to be only 1500 FM receivers in Houston capable of receiving transmissions in the 88-108 mc band, perhaps another 2500 capable of receiving the earlier 42-50 mc band, but inexpensive converters for the older sets were said to coming to market soon.

For his achievement in getting a sustaining FM station on the air, Hofheinz was elected first President of the Frequency Modulation Association of America in 1947 and held the post for 2 years according to his biographer. I have not been able to find out anything about this organization.

The upgrades that were promised took longer than anticipated and it was not until December 2nd that a half page ad in the Press announced the extension of programming from 1pm to 10pm daily, all of it sustaining, with a boost to 1000 watts. The call letters also were flipped on that day to KOPY-FM. The ad touted KOPY as Houston’s newest radio station and Texas’ First FM and acknowledged that there were few sets so offered demonstrations at all the advertisers who had agreed to set up receivers in public areas so listeners could stop in and experience the new technology. The list of advertisers included Foley’s, City National Bank, Zenith Radio, Houston Transit Co., Stromberg-Carlson Radio, Black Brothers Furniture, Automatic Sales Co., and Houston Radio Supply Co.

Neither the Post or Chronicle took notice of the announcement of the upgrade and call letter change and none of the three dailies was printing daily program schedules for the FM station as they were for the 4 existing AM stations. By the time the Chronicle started printing FM program schedules, on June 30, 1947, when KTRH-FM signed on, listings indicated KOPY had cut back to 6 hours a day of air time.

According to White's Radio Logs, the station moved to 97.9 mc in the fall of 1949, presumably to accomodate a new FM in Galveston which had been allotted 98.7. The 98.5 frequency was later allocated to Port Arthur.

Hofheinz had always vowed that his radio stations would be profitable or he would shut them down and he pulled the plug on KOPY in the spring of 1950 due to declining ad revenues. Radio listings indicated that it was only simulcasting KTHT-AM programming at that time.

Nationwide, early FM broadcasters faced a long road to viability. According to Walter B. Emery’s Broadcasting and Government many were compelled to leave the air for lack of audience or advertising revenue. In 1949, there were more than 700 FM stations in operation, but by 1956 that had dwindled to 530 and many were simply duplicating AM programming. In 1949 more than 200 authorizations for FM stations were voluntarily returned to the FCC. In 1950, the year KOPY went silent, there were 35 new FM licenses granted by the FCC and 169 deletions. There were at least 2 other FM stations in the Houston area that made it on the air in the late 40s but did not last, KREL-FM, Baytown, and KLUF-FM, Galveston, and there was KXYZ-FM which operated for just over 5 years then went silent for 8 years before returning to the air. There were also other permits issued for FMs in the Houston area which never got on the air at all.

The original call letters of Houston’s first FM are now in use on Country Legends, 97.1, which is licensed to Cleveland, TX, and has a transmitter near Shepherd. The KOPY-FM calls are in use on a station in Alice, TX; the station now operating on 98.5 mHz, KTJM -FM, serves the Houston market from a transmitter near Devers and is licensed to Port Arthur and is not related in any way to the earlier FM. The original transmitter site on N. Ennis is still in use; it was the longtime site of the tower for KQUE-FM and KLTN-FM, 102.9 MHz, still operates from that facility while KHMX-FM uses the site as a back-up.

The owners of the Houston Post and KPRC were apparently miffed that Hofheinz had beat them on the air with his station. Three days after KTHT-FM signed on, on Sunday, August 25, 1946, a big article appeared in the Post about a new FM station for Houston - KPRC-FM - which the article said would be on the air by the end of the year. The article bragged about the pioneering role of KPRC-AM in Houston radio and the superiority of FM for symphonic broadcasts but no mention was made of an earlier station in the lower FM band in the early 40s that had been licensed to the Post. No where in the article was the claim made that KPRC-FM would be Houston’s first FM but nowhere in the article were readers informed that they could already tune in to an FM station in Houston. The Post apparently never acknowledged the existence of the other station until January 9, 1947, more than 3 weeks after KPRC-FM had signed on, when the paper started printing the daily program schedule of by then KOPY-FM alongside the schedule for KPRC-FM.

The Chronicle had carried the news of the launch of KTHT-FM on August 22 but apparently did not report on the call letter flip on December 2nd, and did not start printing FM program schedules until June 30, 1947, when KTRH-FM signed on.

The Houston Press, although it carried news about and ads for KTHT-FM/KOPY-FM and other FMs throughout it’s history, apparently never printed program schedules for FM stations.



Biographer Edgar Ray mentions KTHT-FM only a couple of times in passing and is careless with particulars. He says the license was issued early in 1946 and the call letter change took place on August 21. I had to skim every page of the Houston Press from January 1, 1946, thru August 22 to find the correct information, then continue skimming until December 2nd to get the correct date for the call letter flip. As a result, I know far more about what happened in Houston in 1946 than I ever imagined I’d know.

The 1940s - Part 2 - Texas Star's KTHT

During World War II, the FCC refused to issue any construction permits or even hold hearings on applications for new radio stations unless the applicants had the equipment on hand to start construction. Roy Hofheinz had been disappointed in 1941 when his initial application for a permit for KTHT had been denied because of the equipment policy, despite a favorable recommendation from an FCC Examiner. Two of his partners had been more disappointed and wanted out so Hofheinz had taken a 75% interest in Texas Star Broadcasting. While the two other applicants did nothing, waiting for an approval before acting, Hofheinz rented a warehouse near Buffalo Bayou and began stockpiling equipment, both new and used, learning all he could about engineering and radio station operations along the way by consulting with others. Despite wartime restrictions on strategic materials, he finally managed to accumulate everything he needed and he petitioned the Commission to re-open the hearing. One of the other competing applicants was the Houston Press, owned by Scripps-Howard, which wanted a radio station in Houston.

During his earlier visits to Washington as early as 1939, Hofheinz had become acquainted with W. Ervin “Red” James, an FCC commissioner. They would become like brothers and James would be indispensable to Hofheinz in the approval process. James told Hofheinz’ (and later his biographer Edgar Ray) that after the initial hearing in 1941, FCC Chairman Leonard Fly had called him aside and told him he was not helping himself in Washington by being seen with Hofheinz because ‘he’s not going to get a radio station.’ Hofheinz had powerful political enemies in Houston who happened to own radio stations of their own and they did not want the competition, particularly from Hofheinz.

As the hearings resumed in May, 1944, Fly personally examined and cross-examined Hofheinz. who acted as his own attorney, making much of his failure to resign as county judge when he put in his application. Hofheinz had actually promised to resign as soon as the permit was granted, not before, and would not run for political office again, but he left the first day of the hearings convinced that Fly was going to succeed in blocking his application. Hofheinz was not a wealthy man and he had sold everything he owned to finance his dream of owning a radio station. He called his wife at home and told her it was all over, everything was lost and he’d have to find something else to do. His remaining partner, Dick Hooper, son of the man who developed the Doctor Hooper oil fields at Conroe and on the board of First City National Bank, promised Hofheinz he was good for the cash if they decided to appeal the expected ruling to the courts.

Red James was no longer on the Commission, having resigned to enter the Navy, but before leaving he had prepped Hofheinz on what to expect. Unbeknownst to Hofheinz and Hooper he had also briefed another Commissioner, Cliff Durr, a Rhodes scholar, on Hofheinz’s accomplishments and achievements. After Fly finished examining Hofheinz on the second day of the hearings, he opened the process up to the other commissioners and Durr said that he had a few questions of his own. Over the next 2 days Durr proceeded to lead Hofheinz through a recitation of his accomplishments, his reputation for honesty and integrity, his own powerful and influential backers, and so on. According to Ray, by the end of the hearing Fly would have made a complete fool of himself by voting against the application and Texas Star’s application was officially approved on May 23, 1944.

Days later Hofheinz was shocked to read a news story out of Washington that Chairman Fly had said the Houston hearing might be re-opened since the Judge had not resigned his post. Actually, days before the permit was granted, Hofheinz, worried about the future security of his family, had quietly filed for another term as County Judge. In early July Hofheinz was called before the Commission to explain why he had not informed them of this fact and had not resigned; the primary election was set for Saturday, July 15. Hofheinz had been County judge since 1936 and he told the Commission he believed his political enemies and potential competitors were going to block his application and he had no choice but to run again. Hofheinz told the Commission his competition was a monopoly, with all the stations on the air in Houston at that time controlled by Jesse Jones interests.

Hofheinz was sure his political enemies at home had informed the Commission of his last minute filing for re-election but assured the commissioners he would withdraw from the race once the go-ahead was given, that he would like to stay on in office to finish some projects but would step down immediately if the Commission so ordered. Returning to Houston Thursday, July 13, with the Commission’s blessing, Hofheinz told reporters at the airport KTHT would start test broadcasts from 8:30 to 12 Midnight that evening, then would continue with test programs from 6am to Midnight daily until final FCC approval. With no more fanfare than that, KTHT began broadcasting from studios in the Southern Standard Building at 711 Main.

The schedule first appeared in the Chronicle on July 20th. The line-up of Houston stations as printed by the Chronicle that day included

KTRH, 405.4 Meters, 740 Kilocycles
KTHT, 243.9 Meters, 1230 Kilocycles
KPRC, 315.6 Meters, 950 Kilocycles
KXYZ, 232.4 Meters, 1320 Kilocycles

Though the government had started using kilocycles as the term to designate radio station’s frequencies in 1923, the Houston papers were still printing the corresponding meter designations, possibly for readers with very old receivers.

Though Hofheinz had filed for County Judge he had not run much of a campaign for re-election and according to family members and associates his heart wasn’t in it. He was defeated by a narrow margin in the Democratic Primary, which was tantamount to the election in those days, his first political defeat ever. He submitted his resignation to Commissioner’s Court but the Commissioners refused to accept it, saying they needed his leadership and guidance on several ongoing projects, and he served until the end of his elected term, in January, 1945.

In addition to the above account of the Commission hearings, biographer Ray presents also the viewpoint of Jack Howard, President of Scripps-Howard, which owned the Houston Press, a competing applicant for the permit on 1230 kc. Howard and Jim Hanrahan had their names on the Press’s application and had been present at the initial hearing in 1941, but both had gone off to war. Hanrahan was serving with the Army in Italy and Howard was with the Navy in the Pacific. The notice from the FCC that the Houston hearing was being reactivated was forwarded to Howard and he received it 8 months later. According to Howard, Hofheinz got the permit by default.

Howard’s account also gives insight into Hofheinz’s strategy before the Commission. Always acting as his own attorney rather than hiring an expensive Washington law firm, Hofheinz would show up at the hearings wearing a ‘pint-sized Stetson, lugging a bulging, richly-embossed Mexican leather briefcase, and breathless.’ His act, Howard said, was a most effective one, he came on as the simple little old country boy against the rich corporation. He then could proceed to astonish the Commission with his knowledge of law and broadcasting.

KTHT was the first new station in Houston since 1930. According to Ray, the call letters stood for ‘Keep Talking Houston Texas’ and ‘Kome to Houston Texas.’ The station remained at 1230 kc until 1948 when KNUZ signed on, taking over the 1230 kc frequency while KTHT moved to 790 kc and increased power to 5000 watts. Hofheinz was to sell a 75% interest in the station to Texas Radio in 1953 and then completely dispose of his interests in June, 1958. Robert D. Strauss was president of Texas Radio. Hofheinz was also part owner of Houston Consolidated Television, the group that put Channel 13, KTRK-TV, on the air in 1954, and Texas Star Broadcsting also operated radio stations in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley and had applications for 50,000 watt stations in Dallas and New Orleans, both of which had to be withdrawn due to cash flow problems.

KTHT became a 24 hour a day operation on October 1st, 1946, the first time since before the war Houston had had a 24 hour a day radio station. It was known as Demand Radio 79 and Downbeat in the late 50s and early 60s; subsequent call letters have included KULF ca. 1970, KKBQ-AM, ca. 1982, and currently KBME. It is now a sports station, the Sports Animal, and the original call letters are now used on Country Legends, 97.1.

Later in the 1940s Hofheinz formed Pilot Broadcasting with millionaire mortgage banker Thomas N. Beach of Birmingham, Alabama. Beach had put WTNB on the air in Birmingham in 1946 but did not understand radio. His searches for someone to help him run the station led him to Hofheinz, recommended as a man with a magic touch when it came to radio. When Beach tired of radio, Hofheinz and another Birmingham businessman, George Mattison, bought him out and took over the station which they changed to WILD. During his visits to Birmingham, Hofheinz met a young announcer at the station by the name of Loel Passe whom he brought back to Houston to work at KTHT. Passe was to go on to a long career in Houston radio and is remembered fondly as a play-by-play announcer for the Houston Buffs, Colt 45s and Astros.

KTHT affiliated with the Mutual Broadcasting System. Ted Hills, who had been the operator and program director of KFVI in the mid-20s and KTLC later was hired as program director but Ray says there was never any doubt Roy Hofheinz called all the shots. The station intended to provide music and community involvement and emphasize live, on-the-scene news coverage and over the next several years history was to hand Hofheinz several sterling opportunities to demonstrate the latter commitment and the station was to receive praise and commendation for doing so. Hofheinz vowed the station would be profitable from the start and it was. He possessed not only knowledge of the law and broadcasting, but he understood programming, promotion and sales, and was able to give his sales staff the promotions they needed to attract advertisers. The first commercial on the station was on behalf of a restaurant in the basement of the Foley’s department store that just happened to be owned by Hofheinz’s father-in-law.

It wasn’t long after getting KTHT on the air that Hofheinz realized he’d made a mistake in going for a low-power outlet and he began making plans to move the station to a better frequency and boost power. Concerned that his political enemies and business rivals might take over the abandoned frequency when that day came, he confided his plans to some associates and advised them to be ready to file for the frequency as soon as he announced his application to move. That group of friends was eventually to win approval to take over the 1230 frequency.

There will be much more about KTHT on this blog, including special features on the use of the first wire recorder, coverage of the United Nations organizational meetings in San Francisco in the Spring of 1945, the Cruising Radio Studio, coverage of a devastating hurricane of August, 1946, and a public service project called the GI House, which will appear on the side-bar under the Stations category.


Note: The above account owes much to Edgar Ray’s biography of Hofheinz, The Grand Huckster, which includes background information not available in local news reports. But Ray is careless with details like dates and his account has been verified and supplemented wherever possible with local news stories.

KTHT Station Profile

Original Call Letters: KTHT

Original owners: Texas Star Broadcasting (Roy Hofheinz)

Original air date: 8:30pm, June 13, 1944

Original frequency: 1230 Kilocycles (250 watts)

Original call letter meanings: Keep Talking Houston Texas and Kome to Houston Texas

Moved to 790 Kilocycles on February 17, 1948, boosted power to 5000 watts.

Additional call letters on 790: KULF (ca. 1970), KKBQ (8/13/82), KBME (4/24/98)

Current owners: Clear Channel Communications

Current format: Sports talk

Website: The Sports Animal

A link to all articles published on the blog Labeled KTHT (in reverse order as published). Includes a Gallery.

A link to all articles published on the blog Labeled Hofheinz.

A link to the 79KULF Facebook page. 

Additional mentions of the station may be located using the search feature.

The 1930s - Part 1 - The End of KTLC

The decade of the 1930s was a relatively quiet one on the Houston radio scene. There were 4 radio stations operating here in 1930, KPRC, KTRH, KXYZ and KTLC and 2 in Galveston, KFUL and KFLX. By the fall of 1932 KTLC ceased operations; some of its programming and staff was absorbed by KXYZ. By mid-decade, KFLX was the only signal in Galveston and the call letters were changed to KLUF. Under increasing competitive pressures and the economic situation during the Depression, there was a general thinning out of stations all across the nation in the 1930s. In the 1930 Census, Houston had ranked as the 28th largest city in the nation; by 1940, it had grown to be the 21st largest, but from August, 1932 until July, 1944, there were only 3 radio stations to serve the growing city: KPRC, KTRH and KXYZ.

Jesse Jones, Mr. Houston, owned the Chronicle and the Rice Hotel, which in turn owned KTRH. In the early 30s Ross Sterling sold the Houston Post-Dispatch and KPRC to Jackson Josey, described by the Handbook of Texas as a representative of Jesse Jones, who renamed the company the Houston Printing Co. and renamed the newspaper the Post. In 1930, Tilford Jones, nephew to Jesse Jones, had formed Harris County Broadcasting and purchased KTUE and changed the call letters to KXYZ. For more than a dozen years, up until KTHT hit the airwaves just after D-Day in 1944, all the media in Houston except the Houston Press were controlled by Jesse Jones or his business associates or family. It was a fact Roy Hofheinz was to complain bitterly about to the FCC in his struggle to win approval for KTHT, alleging his competitors operated as a monopoly and were trying to deny him a license. The Houston Press, whose editor had worked for the Post and founded the Chronicle, observed at one time the Post was even more fawning in its admiration of Jones' greatness than his own newspaper. The stations seemed to have cooperated closely on promotions.

There were at least 2 applications for new stations during the decade but nothing became of them and it was not until 1946 that any stations other than KTHT got on the air leading an onslaught of new signals on AM and FM, in the city, the suburbs, and the outlying areas. The decade was not without developments, however. Before it was over, 2 programs started on Houston radio had gone to the networks and were enjoying long, successful runs, with one spawning a spin-off and a short-lived TV version in the 1950s. A Houston station would become only the second in the nation to operate 24 hours a day and two others, KTRH and KPRC, would be only the second pair of stations in the nation to operate from the same antenna.

In 1931, the Federal Radio Commission list of June 30 showed KPRC at 920, licensed to the Houston Printing Co., KTRH at 1120, licensed to the Rice Hotel, KFUL, Galveston, licensed to the News Publishing Co. at 1290, KTLC, Houston, licensed to the Houston Broadcasting Co. at 1310, KFLX, Galveston, licensed to George Roy Clough at 1370, and KXYZ, licensed to the Harris Co. Broadcast Co. at 1420. Up in Austin, KUT was still on the air at 1500, licensed to the Driskill Hotel.

Even though they had different owners on paper, KTLC and KPRC were co-operated for some time in the early 30s. G.E. Zimmerman, who had been the first general manager of KPRC in 1925 and whose title was Supervisor of Radio for the Houston Post-Dispatch, served as General Manager of both stations. KTLC operated from the ‘old Post Building.’ T.P. Hills was the Program Director, Ingraham S. Roberts III was the commercial manager. Since the Post-Dispatch building at Polk and Dowling had only been occupied in 1925, the reference to the ‘old’ Post building was a reference to the building on Travis at Texas which had housed the early radiotelephone studio that supplied some of the programming on WEAY. A Houston city directory of those years shows KTLC on the 3rd and 4th floors. KPRC was on the 22nd floor of the Post-Dispatch skyscraper at the corner of Texas and Fannin. The listings of the two stations occurred side-by-side in the Post-Dispatch in a big display box; the listings for KTRH and KXYZ occurred in smaller print, elsewhere on the page. Only KPRC was named as the Post-Dispatch station.

Some of the staff worked on the air on both stations. Bruce Layer, who was later to be Sports Director of the Houston Press, KPRC and the first Sports Director of KPRC-TV, was doing play-by-play of Buffs games on KTLC. Blind pianist ‘wonder boy’ Frank Tilton appeared regularly on KTLC, still doing his all request piano shows. Occasionally the listings indicated Tilton’s program would also be broadcast by WRR in Dallas.

KTLC ceased operations at the end of the broadcast day on August 17, 1932, a Wednesday. The program schedule printed in the Post-Dispatch that day showed the last program of the day to be the KTLC Goodbye Program, but there was no story.

The Chronicle had more information; in its story that day the Chronicle reported that Tilford Jones, nephew of Jesse Jones and manager of KXYZ, had gone to Washington just a few days earlier to arrange the transfer of KTLC to KXYZ and had received FCC approval. KTLC was to be ‘absorbed.’ Sustaining programs, i.e., those with paying sponsors and unexpired contracts, would be aired on KXYZ; some others might also be picked up and KXYZ’s program director Hayne Hall had other plans for new programming. KXYZ was to increase its power from 100 watts to 250 watts in early September; its studios were still listed as being in the Texas State Hotel at 720 Fannin.

Bruce Layer’s play-by-play of the Buffs starting airing on KXYZ within a few days. The Post’s listings put KXYZ in the display box next to KPRC; KTRH’s listings continued to appear in much smaller print elsewhere on the page. The Chronicle gave equal space to the KTRH and KXYZ listings while KPRC listings were smaller.

One of the announcers who lost a gig with the demise of KTLC was a young man blessed with the ‘gift of gab’ as he put it who had been staging his own teen dances at big dance halls like Kensington Hall and End ‘O Main Dance Hall and as far away as Louisiana since he was 15 and had convinced the program director of KTLC to sell him a block of time once a week for an amateur hour program before such programming was a staple of broadcasting. Within 2 years of the demise of KTLC he would be elected to the Texas Legislature and in 4 years he would become the youngest County Judge ever in the history of Harris Co. and go on to serve four terms. Within 12 years he would own his own radio station and and then several others and draw the attention and acclaim of broadcasters across the nation for his station’s coverage of local, national and international news events. Within 14 years almost to the day he would put Texas’ first FM on the air. Over the next 50 years, he would also serve as mayor of Houston and play a central role in building the world’s first ever domed stadium and bringing major league professional baseball to Houston. Roy Mark Hofheinz had passed the bar at age 19; in 1932 when KTLC folded he was just 20 years of age.