OK City: Historic Broadcast Tower Set To Be Dismantled

Many people may not know, or if they did, have since forgotten, but the broadcast tower at KWTV News 9 once held a pretty impressive world record.

When Channel 9 first signed on the air in December of 1953, it transmitted from a short temporary tower in northeast Oklahoma City.

"We were using a tower that belonged to KOMA Radio," said former KWTV General Manager, Jack DeLier.

DeLier said not for long though, as owner John Griffin had bigger plans.

"The higher the tower, the more viewers we got," DeLier said.

The tower stands at more than 1,572 feet tall, around 300 feet higher than the Empire State Building, making it at one time the world's tallest manmade structure. So tall In fact, Griffin decided against the call letters KOMA and instead chose KWTV, standing for “world's tallest video”.

By the fall of 1954, KWTV reached the widest coverage of any station in the southwest with the view from the top reaching a 60-mile horizon.

The tower cost $650,000 to build back then, that would be just over $3M today. And here are some other facts worth noting: 100,000 pounds of bolts were used in constructing the tower with an overall weight of one million pounds, 28,690 feet of cable was used, 770 gallons of paint is needed for just one coat and 14,400 watts of power is needed to light it up. It also has a one man electric elevator for workers to use for antenna and tower maintenance.

News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

With the change to digital from analog signals the News 9 signal moved to a different tower that is a shared tower with other stations. That’s why the KWTV tower is coming down. A company that specializes in removing broadcast towers has been hired to take it down piece by piece this fall. Once it's down, a scrap metal company will take it to be recycled.