I found this on a discussion board today; it's a documentary on YouTube about KPRC-TV in 1965, with a young Steve Smith and Ray Miller.
The link takes you to the discussion board where you can access the videos and follow the discussion if you wish.
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.
