KRLD-AM is my (Mama Blaster's) go-to radio station for news, weather, traffic, and information -- without the talk radio blowhards. It is an affiliate of CBS Radio, and has an FM sister station, KRLD-FM (which broadcasts from the Cedar Hill tower farm).
The towers are so close to my home that KRLD has sent me several free splitters for my landline telephones, which was receiving KRLD broadcasts and was therefore not useable for conversations! The splitters worked, and now we only get KRLD over the phones on weird atmospheric days.
From 1949-1970 KRLD Radio stations had a TV-sister as well: KRLD-TV Channel 4, which changed its call letters to KDFW in 1971. For more on KRLD-TV, see here: (
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In football season, I listen to my beloved University of Texas Longhorns on KRLD-AM, which carries UT football, baseball, and basketball games as a member of the Texas Longhorn Radio Network.
KRLD-AM is one of the earliest broadcasters in the area. It grew out of an experimental station run by Edwin Kiest at the Radio Labs of Dallas (KRLD -- get it?) in the 1920s.
KRLD was awarded "clear channel" status as one of the nation's most powerful broadcasters in 1941, authorized to broadcast at 50,000 watts. It is one pf two clear-channel stations in the Metroplex (WBAP-AM is the other), and one of only three in Texas (WOAI-AM). Clear-channel stations have their frequencies protected from any interference for a radius of 750 miles.
Source: (
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The KRLD-AM twin antennas are Garland landmarks, and also NGS benchmarks CS2759 (GARLAND KRLD RAD STA SW TOWER) and CS2760 (GARLAND KRLD RAD STA NE TOWER): (
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From the KRLD-AM website: (
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"NewsRadio 1080 KRLD has been a part of North Texas for more than 80 years. KRLD is the place to go for breaking news, local news and severe weather information. We update traffic & weather together on the 8s.
KRLD began broadcasting on Halloween Day, 1926 from a small second floor room at the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas. Named after the Radio Laboratories of Dallas, KRLD broadcast (originally at 1040 on the AM dial) 6 hours a day, except on Wednesdays when the station closed down to make repairs and recharge the batteries. Since 1938, KRLD’s 50,000-watt signal has been booming out over 100 miles in every direction, and can be heard at night in 38
In the summer of 1941, KRLD moved to 1080 on the dial. One of the original 16 member stations when the Columbia Broadcasting System was formed in 1929, KRLD has a proud heritage of innovation. KRLD was the first station to present live broadcasts of high school and college football games; the first to offer continuous election returns; and the first to broadcast “live” music and entertainment programs. In 1927, KRLD became the first radio station in the world to sell commercials. From the “Hillbilly Hit Parade” and the “Cornbread Matinee” of the ’40’s to our current award-winning news programming, KRLD has always provided timely, memorable and relevant programs to the community."
When I lived in California and was traveling at night, especially when I was west of the San Gabriel Mountains on the I-10 or I-15, I could hear KRLD in the car. I'd spend the drive switching back and forth between my "home-town" stations WBAP-AM and KRLD-AM. They made me homesick and comforted at the same time.
Here is a complete discussion of the site from the excellent Fybush radio blog: (
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"'Tower Site' Does Dallas, part III
When we left you last week, we were near the end of a long day of Dallas tower hunting that included visits to Cedar Hill, home of most of the market's FM and TV signals, as well as 61-kilowatt high school station KEOM and the 12 towers of the KFXR 1190 night site. (Special "Eagle Eyes" credit to Mike Erickson, who spotted a problem with KFXR's posted ASRN numbers, one of which had a "6" where a "9" should have been...)
Next up on the agenda, as the sun headed for the horizon, was the most powerful AM signal licensed to Dallas (and the second-biggest AM signal in the market), the 50 kilowatts of KRLD, 1080 on the dial.
KRLD's calls once stood for "Radio Labs of Dallas," and later tied in nicely with the station's owner, the now-defunct Times Herald newspaper. Before the days of NARBA, KRLD ran 10,000 watts at 1040 on the dial, under a long-running "Special Authorization" that gave 1040 to Dallas and to WTIC in Hartford (this stemmed, I believe, from WTIC's 1934 move to 1040 from 1060, where it had been sharing time with Baltimore's WBAL, which was itself split between local programming on 1060 and a synchronous arrangement with New York's WJZ on 760 - but that's a very different story!)
In any event, KRLD and WTIC both moved to 1080 in 1941 (as did KWJJ in Portland, Oregon, which had also been on 1040; the frequency's fourth occupant, WKAR East Lansing MI, became a daytimer on 870), and KRLD was soon blasting out 50 kilowatts from this site in Garland, northeast of downtown Dallas, with a pattern that protected Hartford but covered the southwest very well indeed.
The top of the daytime tower (they just don't build 'em like that anymore...) was home to KRLD-TV 4 for a time, before channel 4 joined channel 8 at Cedar Hill in 1955. I don't believe that KRLD-FM (92.5, later KAFM and now KZPS) ever operated from this site, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
(2009 update: And indeed, I was wrong - that old VHF antenna, which is actually atop the nighttime-only DA tower, belonged to the FM station and not to Channel 4, according to KRLD CE Erik Disen, who should know!)
Out at the gate to the site on Saturn Road, deep in the trees, we can see an old sign that looks as though it once had neon letters that spelled out "K R L D." Like we said, they just don't build 'em like that."