January 19, 1981–
More about L.H. Bates Vocational-Technical Institute’s radio station KTOY [original call letters KTPS, now KYFQ and owned by the Bible Broadcasting Network.]
Bates provided future broadcasters with the skills to pass the FCC license exams, but also offered on-air experience and technical training in both radio and television [KTPS Channel 62. This later became KBTC Channel 28]
In February 1981, it all came crashing down.
From the Internet Archive, some of our Lost Comments—
mikec says:
January 16, 2017 2:41 pm at
I remember seeing the pictures of this & thinking how miraculous nobody was hurt or killed. There was some discussion at the time whether KTOY would rebuild & return to the air after this occurred. Fortunately, 91.7 did rebuild & return – for awhile. It’s so sad that 91.7 has devolved into a ‘Christian podcaster’ instead of a vibrant student-run, teaching facility for broadcasting students.
I was a student there at KTPS-TV in the evening program on the night of the storm. I think we signed off around 11p ish. I had stayed late with the evening instructor Robert “Bob” Shufelt sp?. We were working in our 2″ videotape library. I remember we left about 1 am. That storm was carrying on big time. Shortly after the tower came down. Getting back on the air was a bit of a circus. Since our tower was gone and since we provided programing to Tacoma Public Schools, one of the quick fixes was a cable feed to Cable TV Puget Sound just up the hill from us next to Ch 11. Our old very tired Marconi Transmitter still worked, so a short stub antenna was attached to what was left of the tower structure within a couple of weeks and we were “Back on the Air”. Of course that was a bit of a joke. With our Transmitter turned way down, so as no to fry our stubby antenna, I think our signal was lucky to go a couple of blocks at best. We stayed on the cable hook up until our transmitter was moved to the new antenna site at KCPQ Ch 13 at Clover Park Technical school. Needless to say, I learned quite a bit more then what was in the normal curriculum.