A KPRC-TV Gallery

Correspondent Andrew Brown has come through again with a great picture of the KPRC radio and TV complex on Post Oak about where the Williams Tower now stands which the station occupied from 1953 to 1972.

I passed through those doors a number of times as a young kid. My Mother wanted to be on TV and appeared on several audience participation shows in the early days of TV including Darts for Dough, a game show hosted by Dick Gottlieb. This was my earliest exposure to broadcasting.


The book The Fault Does Not Lie With Your Set, written by Jack Harris, Paul Huhndorff and Jack McGrew, has many pictures in the back of the book including people, equipment and facilities. Here is a scan of one page with two shots of the building.


The bottom photo shows the scene on opening day when thousands of Houstonians turned up for a tour and open house. According to the book, operations began from the new facility on March 20, 1953, but other sources give the date as March 29. The new, state-of-the-art facility used a converted quonset hut to house the studios, as had been the case at the original KLEE-TV site, just a half mile south on Post Oak Rd.

KGUL-TV signed on in Galveston on Channel 11 on March 22 and for the first time KPRC-TV had competition for viewers.

An ad from Broadcasting Yearbook, 1960.

There are many pictures of KPRC-TV in the Bob Bailey Collection at the University of Texas, listed in the Off Site Galleries on the sidebar. I have only been able to find the following few using their search feature which requires that you know the way the picture was tagged:

This shot shows the KPRC staff assembled in the courtyard of the new building.

This shot dated 1960 shows the staff assembled in a studio. My guess is the gentleman in the dark suit at the front is Jack Harris, General Manager of KPRC Radio and Television. UPDATE: The correct date for this picture is 6/15/1950 - see the comment below by Bill Bremer.

This shot shows Director Alfred Hitchcock and actress Anne Baxter appearing as guests on a program. Athough the show is not identified, my guess would be this was Matinee, a daily afternoon variety/talk show that came on at 4 pm hosted by Dick Gottlieb, who appears on the right in the picture. I don't remember that set from Matinee, however. From the date, this must have been in the old building.

Here's another shot of the same set-up. Note the picture on the wall which is probably Buff Stadium. Baxter was starring in the Hitchcock film I Confess which was released on March 22 so they were probably in town to promote the movie. For Anne Baxter fans there are several more pictures in the collection of her at the time of this visit. There is one more picture of the studio setting but it shows nothing different.

Newsman Lee Tucker.

There is a photo of Ron Stone somewhere in the collection but it is mislabeled and I can't remember what name was on the picture so I can't find it.

A Facebook page devoted to the history of Channel 2 with some pictures also of KPRC radio.

As mentioned in this recent post, the feature on Post Cards from Texas on Channel 55 included many photos of the early days KLEE-TV/KPRC-TV. That post also included a link to a Chronicle feature with a couple of pictures.

While Bill Calder was a disc jockey on KPRC-AM in the 1960s he had a late night talk/variety show on Channel 2 that followed the Tonight Show. The Bill Calder website, maintained by his son Alex, includes 8 pictures of the show (plus photos of Calder during his days at KXYZ and KPRC radio in Houston).

FM Chronology - The 1950s - Part 2 - KFMK-FM, KHGM-FM, KHUL-FM, KRBE-FM and a Gordon McLendon permit

It was not until 1958 that there were any further changes on the FM dial in Houston. A list from ‘North American Radio and TV Station Listings’ by Vane A. Jones for that year has four FMs again listed for Houston: KFMK, 97.9; KPRC-FM, 102.9; KTRH-FM, 101.1, and KUHF, 91.3 KFMK-FM was the first commercial FM on the air in Houston without a sister AM. The station was apparently ready to go on the air in mid-January, 1958 but had to await regulatory approval and finally got on the air Sunday, February 2nd at 5pm. The station operated with 10,000 watts from the Medical Towers Building at 1709 Dryden. The newspaper listings showed the frequency just as 98 mc but later as 97.9; the format was popular music. Bob Gardner, who had previously worked at KLBS before it was taken over by McLendon and in Beaumont radio and at KTRK-TV, was the General Manager.

Interest in FM broadcasting was beginning to pick up around the country and before the year was over there were more developments on the FM dial in Houston. In November of 1958, Paul Taft purchased KPRC-FM and changed the call letters to KHGM-FM which stood for ‘Home of Good Music’ or ‘Houston’s Good Music.’ The call letter switch took place at 1pm on Sunday, the 9th of November. Taft had resigned as General Manager of KGUL-TV, channel 11, earlier in the year and formed Taft Broadcasting.

Just before the switchover, KPRC-FM had been operating only from 6pm to 11pm daily and the new ownership meant an expansion of broadcast hours. KTRH-FM was on from 1pm to 12 Mid, KFMK-FM from 8am 12 Mid and KUHF-FM from 7am to 9:30pm.

On April 26th of the following year, KHGM-FM moved to 99.1 mc, signing on at 12 Noon after being off the air for 24 hours to complete the changeover of equipment. The station boasted 49,000 watts and claimed to be the most powerful FM in Houston. This apparently coincided with a move to a new facility at 4810 San Felipe on the city’s far west side. Ads highlighted the station was to be a showcase of ‘tasteful music,’ 17 hours a day with the library having been selected as a result of a survey of 2000 homes. The regular broadcast day was to start at 7am.

On July 1, 1961, the call letters of KHGM-FM were changed to KODA-FM to match an AM sister station. KODA-FM is still on the air today on 99.1 MHz and as the heir to KPRC-FM is believed to be the oldest FM in Houston and either the first or second oldest FM in Texas, depending on whether KPRC-FM was on the air continuously in the 1950s. KODA-FM was later to claim to be only the second station in the nation to broadcast full-time in stereo. Meanwhile the KHGM-FM call letters were later used on a station on 95.1 mc in the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange area.

Taft Broadcasting was also to operate the Muzak franchise for Houston in addition to an AM station, KODA-AM, and was also involved with the first sound system at the Astrodome and as a contractor for NASA. Taft Broadcasting LLC is still in business, run by Paul Taft’s son, Philip, although they have not owned any broadcast properties in Houston since 1978.

At least two more and possibly three new FMs started broadcasting before the end of the decade. A story in the Chronicle in eary September said KHUL-FM would be on the air on September 22 but it was not until 7am on October 4, 1959, that the station started broadcasting on 95.7 mc. The call letters of this station were pronounced ‘cool’ and initially it operated 24 hours a day. Studios were located on the 15th floor of the Park Towers, a high rise apartment building at 1700 Holcombe Blvd. at Braeswood which is no longer standing. T. A. Robinson, Jr., President and owner, said the station would program ‘tasteful arrangements’ of music by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Vernon Duke, James Van Heusen, Lerner and Lowe and Duke Ellington.

KHUL has been remembered fondly as a jazz station by many but that can not be confirmed from the newspaper accounts and early listings; it may have evolved into a jazz station later. An ad in 1963 touted ‘All Night Jazz’ and ‘Swinging Standards all day and evening.” An ad for the station in 1964 mentioned ‘Jazz after Midnight’ in addition to other special programs and did not claim it was a full time Jazz station.

A typical program schedule in the papers in late 1959 showed KHUL Start at 6am, KHUL, Calm and Collected at 12:05pm, KHUL and Refreshing at 3:05pm, KHUL of the Evening at 6pm and KHUL All Night at 12M with news 4 times a day. Those program titles could refer to easy listening programming.

The twenty-four hour a day broadcast schedule did not last at KHUL-FM. An ad for the station in early 1962 said KHUL ‘Stays up til 2am, Friday Saturday and Sunday, Midnight Monday thru Thursday’ and could be found ‘Just Under 96 on Your Dial,’ for ‘Good Music and News.’

The station changed hands and call letters in the mid to late 60s becoming KIKK-FM and operating as a country station for more than three decades before becoming a smooth jazz station, KHJZ-FM, The Wave, in 2001. It is now Hot Hits 95-7 (KKHH).

On the same day the paper announced KHUL’s impending launch it also noted KUHF-FM was installing the first stereo control room in the city and KHGM-FM had published a program guide.

At 6pm on November 8, 1959, KRBE-FM came on the air at 104.1mc. This was originally a full-time classical music station with studios in the 1400 Hermann Drive high rise apartment building across from the Rose Garden in Hermann Park. Some have asserted the calls were because the station was located on Kirby drive just north of US 59 but the station did not move there for almost a decade. Ads appearing in the papers the day the station launched indicated the call letters stood for ‘The Key to Radio Broadcasting Excellence” but it has also been noted the calls happened to be the initials of the owner’s business, Roland Baker Enterprises.

Ellis W. Gilbert was the President and General Manager and also had an air shift. Gilbert had just recently resigned as manager of KTRH-FM, which also scheduled a lot of classical music, and according to a story, had been known as ‘Mr. FM’ in the early 50s when he hosted ‘House of Music’ on the ‘now defunct’ KYXZ-FM. Other air personalities included Roy Landers, Eamon Grant and Eddie Bates. The station has had the same calls throughout its history.

According to the history of Dallas radio station KLIF Gordon McLendon owned an FM in Houston in 1959 with the call letters KZAP-FM but exactly how those calls figure into Houston radio history is not clear. Gordon McLendon was one of the first to recognize the value of ‘parking’ call letters that he wanted to use and that may be what happened in this case. When McLendon bought a San Francisco AM and flipped it to KABL, the previous call letters KROW were assigned to his proposed FM in Houston. Later, McLendon switched the KROW calls with his proposed calls for an FM in Dallas, KOST-FM, and that is the call the Houston FM signed on with. Just how KZAP figures into to this is not clear. The first mention of KOST-FM, 100.3 mc, is not found in radio listings until mid-1961 and when it actually first got on the air is not known. I have found only one listing in the Houston papers for a KZAP-FM, much later in the 1960s.

A KPRC and KPRC-FM Gallery

A letter by Alfred P. Daniel, program director of KPRC, dated 1932, confirming a date and time for a prospective guest on a KPRC program. The image in the lower left is the Post-Dispatch building on the southwest corner of Polk and Dowling showing the flattop antenna on top (see below for another image). By this time the KPRC transmitter and antenna were located at Sugar Land and the former KPRC antenna was being used by sister station KTLC. The image in the upper right is the Post-Dispatch 'skyscraper,' 22 stories tall, on the corner of Fannin and Texas, now the Magnolia Hotel. The building was completed in 1926 and starting February 3, 1926, KPRC programs began emanating from a suite of three studios on the top floor that were to become known as the Skyline Studios of the Houston Post-Dispatch. They had a view of perhaps the whole city at that time as this would have been one of the tallest buildings in town.

Image courtesy of Andrew Brown.

For a very good shot of the Post-Dispatch skyscraper dating probably from the late 20s, see the first post in this thread on HAIF.


Alfred P. Daniel, Dean of Houston Radio. Owner of Houston's second radio station, WCAK, program director of Houston's first radio station, WEV. First program director and announcer on KPRC in 1925. Photo by Paul Huhndorff, published in Jack Harris' book The Fault Does Not Lie With Your Set.


The Houston Post building, originally the Houston Post-Dispatch building, on the southwest corner of Polk and Dowling, now demolished. First occupied in 1925 just weeks before KPRC signed on. The radio station occupied the structure on the roof for the first nine months of its existence but had long since moved out of the building when this picture was taken. Photo by Al Shire from the website Toasted Posties.


Judd Mortimer Lewis, early KPRC children's show performer 'Uncle Judd,' Post columnist and first Poet Laureate of Texas. Lewis' great grandson Judd Perry maintains this website devoted to his poetry.

The following photos are courtesy of Robert Wilford, an engineer at KPRC, and date from June, 1949.

Pictured is Raymond Franks in the AM Master Control. Franks was a student at Rice who worked at KPRC while going to school and moved to California on graduation.

This is Jim Bailey taken in what was called the 'broom closet' at KPRC-AM. It was located at the end of a hallway. According to Robert Wilford, Jim was a very good announcer with a voice to match. He was the one who did the Houston Symphony broadcasts originated by KPRC for the Texas Quality Network (WSAI, WFAA, KARK) weekly. The broadcasts were sponsored by the Texas Gulf Sulfur Corporation.

An ad from Broadcasting Yearbook, 1965.


KPRC-FM

The following pictures are also from Robert Wilford. All the photos date from June, 1949.

The FM control room, located in the City National Bank Building at Main and McKinney, a new building at that time but since demolished. The transmitter and tower were atop the building. The people are unidentified.

The FM transmitter.

Robert Wilford is shown working on one of the 250 FM receivers that were being installed in the city's buses as mentioned in this blog post. The other people are unidentified.

An unidentified piece of equipment.

This gallery will be listed under the KPRC station profile on the sidebar and will be added to from time to time as more pictures become available.

A Day in the Life -

...of a Houston radio listener. From the Houston Post, Wednesday, February 18, 1948, the first day of broadcast of KNUZ, 1230.

FM Chronology Part 3 - KPRC-FM

The Houston Post reported on October 1, 1946, that Harris County Broadcasters, owners of KXYZ, had been granted a conditional construction permit for a Class B FM station on the previous day, subject to final FCC approval of engineering conditions. On December 2nd, the same day KTHT-FM changed call letters and increased program hours and power, the Chronicle reported the FCC had issued a Construction Permit for KXYZ-FM. apparently the final permit. The story said the station would probably be on ‘early next year’ on the frequency of 96.3 mc but that was perhaps a typo; the station was to operate on 96.5 and didn’t get on the air for fourteen months.

On November 28, the Chronicle reported that Tri-Cities Broadcasting had applied for an FM for the Tri-Cities area; this was the group headed by Goose Creek Sun publisher Robert Matherne. It was also reported the FCC had as yet taken no action on the group’s application for an AM. It was to take two and a half years for this FM to get on the air.

Houston’s second FM, KPRC-FM, began broadcasting on December 24, 1946, Christmas Eve, at 3pm, with a formal dedication ceremony at 5:45. That ceremony echoed in several ways the launch of KPRC-AM 21 and a half years earlier. Alfred P. Daniel was again the first announcer on the air and master of ceremonies of the dedication. Governor William P. Hobby, who had been President of the Post-Dispatch in 1925 and was now owner of the newspaper, was also on hand, as was Houston mayor-elect Oscar F. Holcombe, who had been mayor in 1925 and had retired from public office but had come out of retirement and won another term as mayor that fall.

The plan was for all programming on KPRC-FM to be live, no transcriptions were to be used. However, repeat broadcasts of programs were to be a regular feature. The first evening’s broadcast included a performance of Charles Dicken’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ at 7pm which was to be aired again on Christmas Day. It is not clear if they were going to allow themselves to transcribe a performance like that for later re-broadcast or if it was to be performed live two times.

Originally the station operated at 99.7 megacycles, FM Channel 259, but it moved to 102.9 megacycles the last weekend of October, 1947. The permit was for 195,000 watts. Studios were located in the Lamar Hotel at Main and Walker where KPRC-AM had been situated since the early 1930s. The transmitter was on the City National Bank Building at 921 Main, on the northeast corner of Main and McKinney. Studios may have later been located on the 23rd floor of that building.

The Post started printing a daily schedule for KPRC-FM programming in a couple of days and on January 9, 1947, also started printing a daily schedule of KOPY-FM programming.

In the late 1940s and 1950, radio listings indicted KPRC-FM was the only Houston FM not simply simulcasting it’s AM sister station.

KPRC-FM was sold in 1958 and the call letters changed to KHGM-FM and then in 1959 it was moved to 99.1 mc and in 1961 the call letters changed to KODA-FM.

A list of FM stations on the air as of January 20, 1947, from Broadcasting-Telecasting magazine showed the following in Texas, all of which must have signed on in late 1946 or very early 1947:

KERA A. H. Belo Corp. (WFAA), Dallas 94.3
KOPY Texas Star B/c Co. (KTHT), Houston 98.5
KPRC-FM Houston Printing Corp. (KPRC), Houston 99.7
KISS Walmac Co. (KMAC), San Antonio 100.1
KYFM Express Pub. Co., San Antonio 101.5
WOAI-FM Southland Industries (WOAI), San Antonio 102.3
KCMC-FM KCMC Inc. (KCMC), Texarkana 92.5
KTRN Times Pub. Co. of Wichita Falls, Wichita Falls 97.7

The Wichita Falls station had received a CP as of June, 1946, but that sort of information for the others is not available on line.

In the 1940 Census, Houston had ranked as the 21st largest city in the nation. By 1946, it was estimated to have risen to #17 and by the 1950 Census it would be the 14th largest. At the start of 1947 there were just six radio stations on the air here, 4 AM and 2 FM. Over the next 2 years, however, 4 more AMs, 2 more FMs and the first TV station would come on the air, plus a host of stations in surburban towns and cities.

FM in Houston - Early Developments

Perhaps the earliest mention of an FM in Houston came in a brief story on page 1 of the Post on February 19, 1942. The Houston Printing Co., owner of the Post and KPRC, had filed for a permit for a frequency modulation station on 46,500 kc (46.5 mc). There was no further detail of the technical specifications but the very brief mention did indicate the coverage area would be about 10,500 square miles serving an estimated population of 722,600 and there was a brief explanation of the difference between FM and standard broadcasting.

This application is also found in a list in FM Magazine in February 1942. This was a list of ‘CPs filed and authorized by the FCC up to February 17, 1942,’ but there was no indication of the construction status of this station. The FM band was between 42 and 50 MHz at that time (or, as it was designated then, mc, for ‘megacycles.’)

The FCC was experimenting with the use of alphanumeric calls for FM stations but none had been assigned for this station. Based on the system in use, the calls would have been K65 followed by a 2 letter code to signify Houston such as HO or HT. In other words, both the frequency and city of license was built into the calls. Experimental stations would have an X in their calls. Both the public and broadcasters did not like this system of assigning calls and it had obvious limitations and was dropped in November, 1943, and stations were allowed to choose their own calls. Most early FM licensees were also AM licensees and they chose to simply add ‘FM’ to their AM calls. The only other station in Texas on the list of February 17, 1942, in FM Magazine was in Amarillo and it also was not on the air.

So far as is known, this early Houston FM never got on the air. There was a wartime freeze on civilian construction, a shortage of necessary equipment, and a controversy over where the FM band should be. As of June 17, 1945, the FCC resolved that question and designated the frequencies between 88 and 108 MHz for FM. A list of new assignments for existing FM stations moving up from the lower band issued September 12 of that year had no Texas stations on it, so if K65HO (or whatever) ever made it on the air, it didn’t last. Twenty nine more stations were added to the new FM band by the end of the year but a list from the Broadcasting Yearbook, published January 1, 1946, indicated there were still no FM stations authorized by the FCC in Texas. In addition, over the years the Post published several retrospectives on Houston radio and particularly its own involvement, notably when KPRC-FM first signed on and when KLEE-TV became KPRC-TV, but none of these ever mentioned this early FM so I have concluded it never got on the air.

Some FM operators continued to use the lower band for several years. Belo Broadcasting (WFAA, Dallas Morning News) operated an experimental FM in Dallas, W51XC at 45.2 mc in the fall of 1945 (and a high frequency amplitude modulation station in 1939) but the FM is not on the aforementioned list of stations moving up from the lower band so the experimental station may not have been on the air long in 1945.

Belo also claims to have put the first FM in Texas on the air, using the calls KERA-FM (later WFAA-FM) and broadcasting on 94.3 mc, at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas as of October 5, 1946 but a Houston station was to beat this date by six weeks.

The first application for an FM in Houston in the higher frequency band may have been made by Lee Segall in late 1945 or early 1946 but an exact date has not been determined. In reporting Veterans Broadcasting’s application for a station to replace KTHT at 1230 kc when it moved to 790 kc, the Houston Press reported on December 18th, 1945, the new station would be Houston’s fifth so presumably Segall’s applicaton had not been made before then. Segall was a Houston advertising executive, President of Segall Weedin, and had created the radio show Dr. IQ on KTRH in 1937.

The Press reported on April 26, 1946, that Segall Broadcasting Co. had been granted an FCC license for an FM station but no other details were given. Besides his FM permit, which was apparently never acted on, Segall was also an applicant for the station on 1230 kc that was to replace KTHT-AM when it moved to 790 kc but lost out on that competition. He also had applied for a station on 790 but withdrew that application. By 1947, he had relocated to Dallas and put KIXL-AM and FM on the air in Dallas in a partnership with several show business personalities. The ‘Good Music’ format on KIXL was one of the first of its kind and inspired Gordon McLendon’s programming on KELP, El Paso, in the mid-1950s and later his famous KABL, San Francisco. It also possibly was the model for KCOH-AM, Houston, when it went on the air in 1948 and countless early FM stations. By the time of his death in Dallas in 1984, Segall’s connection to early Houston radio had been forgotten.

On May 4, 1946, the Post reported that the previous day its parent company had been granted a ‘final Construction Permit’ for an FM station on 99.7 mc with 19.6 kw power and an antenna of 497 feet. The call letters were to be KPRC-FM. Station GM Kern Tips touted the static free reception of FM and noted it was particularly suited for symphonic broadcasts. KPRC-FM was to make it to the air just before the end of 1946 but was not to be the first Houston FM.


For those interested in reading more about the development of FM broadcasting, Jeff Miller's History of American Broadcasting has a section devoted to FM.

KPRC Station Profile

KPRC, 950 AM

Original air date: May 9, 1925

Original owners: The Houston Post-Dispatch newspaper

Original call letter meaning: Kotton Port, Rail Center

Current owners: Clear Channel Communications

Website: The 950 - Radio Mojo

Additional call letters used: none

KPRC is usually credited as the oldest station in Houston and that is true with the qualification that it was licensed to Sugar Land, Texas, for a while in the late 1920s-early 1930s. It is sometimes claimed that it was the first Houston station but that is false; it was the 11th station licensed to Houston in the early 1920s.

A KPRC/KPRC-FM Gallery on this blog.

A special Gallery of KPRC personalities Tim and Bob.

Photos at the Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin, relating to KPRC. This grouping will include at least one photo relating to KPRC-TV.

An additional photo listed at CAM under K.P.R.C.

All posts on this blog labeled KPRC (in reverse order as posted).

For additional mentions of the call letters, use the search feature.