R.I.P.: Colorado Broadcast Pioneer Harry Hoth

Harry Hoth

Harry W. Hoth, who helped bring television to Colorado Springs and also served as mayor who championed construction of the Pikes Peak Summit House and major water projects, died Tuesday after a short illness.

He was 92, according to gazette.com.

"He loved Colorado Springs and devoted a lot of his life to it," daughter Susie Briggs said. "He was just about the most amazing person in the whole world; we will miss him so much."

Hoth persuaded the owners of Colorado Springs radio station KRDO-AM to expand into television and got the station on air with a test pattern in 1952. Hoth told a Gazette reporter in 2002 that he remembered climbing a tree atop Cheyenne Mountain and shining a light to his engineer, Charlie Upton, who was near Castle Rock as they relayed a network signal from a station in Denver.

"The name Harry Hoth is synonymous with television in Colorado," Nick Matesi, vice president and general manager of KKTV in Colorado Springs, said in an email. "His contribution to the industry and to our community is well documented and will always be appreciated and cherished by those of who live and work here."

As mayor from 1963 to 1967, Hoth helped establish a new Pikes Peak Summit House and led the push for a pipeline project to bring snowmelt to Front Range reservoirs. He was first elected to the council in 1959 and also served on the city's Planning Commission from 1951 to 1962.

A Concordia, Mo., native, Hoth served in the Marine Corps during World War II and came to Colorado Springs to attend Colorado College in the 1940s and graduated from St. Paul's College in Concordia, Mo.

While in school, he worked part time in radio sales and promotions at KRDO-AM and persuaded the owners of KRDO to build a television station in Colorado Springs, which went on the air full time in 1953. Two years later, Hoth became president and general manager of KRDO AM/TV and became majority owner in 1961 of Pikes Peak Broadcasting Co. He sold the company in 2006 to News Press & Gazette Broadcasting of St. Joseph, Mo.