Where Did Houston TV Stations Broadcast Before Missouri City Antenna Farm Existed?

[Ptarmigan]

I have wondered where Houston TV stations broadcasted before the Missouri City Antenna Farms were built. I believe they were built in the 1980s. I know one of the collapsed killing seven people in 1982, which is Senior Road Tower, which was for KTXH-TV.

[plumber2]

Channel 11 had it's tower in Santa Fe, at the corner of Tower Rd and KGUL, which was KHOU's original call letters before it relocated to Houston in 1960. The transmitter building is still standing at this location but the tower itself was taken down about 5 years ago. It had been used for marine radio communications up until then. The location is behind the current Santa Fe High School just north of Highway 6.

[editor]

I added a map to this thread showing the location of the old KGUL tower.

[ChannelTwoNews]

I believe the television masts near Missouri City started appearing around 1964 (KPRC's was a 1500-foot "candelabra"-style structure constructed between February and August of that year). It was part of a joint partnership formed by KPRC & KHOU called the Blue Ridge Tower Corporation to build three towers on the Blue Ridge antenna farm. The terms included one transmitter for each station and a third plot which was leased to KHTV (KIAH).

There's a pretty good section on the tower selection/construction phase in a hard to find book called The Fault Does Not Lie With Your Set, which deals with the first 40 years of KPRC's history. The book mentioned the desire to find a location near DeWalt, but it's essentially the same area.

[FIREhat]

I just finished reading The Fault Does Not Lie With Your Set and was particularly intrigued by one of the stories in the section about the towers. In January of 1979 some bad winter weather moved in and iced over the elevator cable in the tower. (I didn't know any of these towers had elevators!) A guy was riding it up for maintenance when it started to slip so he put on the emergency brake and climbed out and the rest of the way up to the top. Two guys came to repair the elevator but were unable to do so and they also sought refuge at the top. So they had three workers stuck up on top of the tower and had to call in the Coast Guard with a helicopter to get them down.

[Tumbleweed_Tx]

when I was a ne'er do well teenager about 30 years ago, we used to hang out in a few cemetaries, drinking Scotch, smoking anything that came our way, and being all-around hoodlums.

One of the cemetaries we hung out in was at the base of the antenna farm, which at that time, was in an area called DeWalt. I guess DeWalt ceased to be when they started building Lake Olympia.

Ah, my misspent youth... where did the time go... LOL

oh... anyway... Back in those days, the antenna farm had maybe 5 antennae there. There were other antennae spread through town, One Shell Plaza was one place until they built the Texas Commerce Tower and Allied Bank, which blocked a good portion of any signal that might come from one Shell... After those two buildings went up, the antenna farm grew rapidly.

[djrage]

Not trying to stray from the subject of this thread but in mentioning of the collapse of the KTXH tower in 82. I remembered I found video of this on YouTube.