2023 Update: The former KTVT-TV studio building and the associated broadcast tower have been razed and removed from the site to make way for new construction of a large distribution center complex - because what I-35 needs is MORE SEMI TRUCK TRAFFIC.
ORIGINAL WM TEXT: From 1960-2009, this transmitter tower hosted KTVT-DT Channel 11 (CBS), KERA-DT Channel 13 and KERA-FM 90.1 (PBS). In 2009, KTVT-DT moved to another tower site, leaving KERA DT and its sister radio station the sole occupants of this tower. KTVT-TV vacated the studio portion of this site in the 1980s.
The tower and associated former TV studio building stands along the US 67 in the southern Dallas County suburb of Cedar Hill TX, along the US 67 south of Belt Line Road.
From the excellent Fybush blog: (
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"Away from the Hill Tower property, a mile or so to the east on the US 67 frontage road, a separate site is home to KTVT (Channel 11), the former independent (and long-ago KFJZ-TV) that became a CBS affiliate (and eventually an O&O) when KDFW went to Fox in 1995. Public broadcaster KERA-TV (13) and KERA-FM (90.1) shares the stick - and you've got to love that groovy transmitter building!
We're not showing the top of this tower because it was in something of a state of disarray; new antennas are going up here for KERA-DT (14) and KTVT-DT (19), and everyone's using low-power auxiliary antennas at the moment while the work goes on."
From AntennaLocator.com: (
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"KERA-FM 90.1 MHz
Dallas, Texas
"Programs That Affect You
Station Status Licensed Class C0 Non-Commercial FM Station
Effective Radiated Power 29,700 Watts
Height above Avg. Terrain 571.7 meters (1876 feet)
Height above Ground Level 514.8 meters (1689 feet)
Height above Sea Level 764.1 meters (2507 feet)
Antenna Pattern Non-Directional
Transmitter Location 32° 35' 02" N, 96° 57' 49" W
License Granted October 02 2015
License Expires August 01 2021
Last FCC Update May 05 2016"
and from Texas PBS affiliates website: (
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"Dallas & Fort Worth > KERA-TV & FM
KERA 13 and KERA 90.1 are the public radio and television stations for North Texas, touching the lives of nearly 2.5 million people every week via television, radio and the Internet. KERA 13 consistently ranks as one of the most-watched public television stations in the country."
From Wikipedia: (
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"KERA-TV, virtual channel 13 (UHF digital channel 14), is a PBS member television station serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex that is licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States. The station is owned by North Texas Public Broadcasting, Inc., and is a sister to NPR member station KERA (90.1 FM) and adult album alternative station KKXT (91.7 FM). The three stations share studios located on Harry Hines Boulevard (adjacent to North Harwood and Wolf Streets, east-northeast of I-35E) in downtown Dallas; KERA-TV's transmitter is located south of Belt Line Road in Cedar Hill.
KERA-TV also serves as the default public television station for several markets in North and West Texas that are not serviced by independent, full-power PBS stations, including Abilene, San Angelo and the Tyler/Longview/Lufkin/Nacogdoches market, as well as the Texas side of the Sherman/Ada market (the Oklahoma side of the latter market is also serviced by translators operated by the OETA member network). KERA is also available on cable in Hillsboro, Waco (where it serves as an alternate to Belton-licensed KNCT) and Texarkana.
. . .
KERA-TV (the call letters are said to represent a "new era in broadcasting") signed on the air on September 14, 1960, originally serving as a member station of National Educational Television (NET). It originally operated from temporary studio facilities at the Davis Building—located behind the original WFAA studios—in downtown Dallas, in two portable buildings that were made to resemble a schoolhouse. It also used the original transmission tower used by WFAA-TV for several months, before moving its transmitter to a tower in Cedar Hill that it shared with then-independent station KTVT (channel 11, now a CBS owned-and-operated station) until 2009, when KTVT moved its transmitter to a different tower site a short distance away. However, KERA's transmitter only produced a medium-power signal that covered Dallas and surrounding suburbs in Dallas, Collin, Hunt, Rockwall, Ellis and Kaufman counties. The station would migrate its operations to the Harry Hines Boulevard facility in April 1961.
During its first years of operation, KERA benefitted frequently through help from commercial broadcast stations in the Metroplex. The Dallas Independent School District also paid the station to carry instructional telecourses that it would produce for broadcast on channel 13. The issues concerning channel 13's limited signal range would be resolved on August 31, 1970, when a new transmitter was installed that expanded KERA's signal coverage into Fort Worth and surrounding communities in Tarrant, Denton, Wise, Parker, Hood and Johnson counties. That same year, KERA became a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which was launched as an independent entity to supersede NET and took over many of the functions of its predecessor network.
In 1974, KERA gained a sister station on radio, when National Public Radio station KERA signed on the air on 90.1 FM; over time, KERA radio would expand its reach throughout North Texas through the launch of translators in Wichita Falls, Tyler and Sherman. That year, channel 13 became the first television station in the United States to broadcast episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus; the station is often credited with introducing the British comedy series to American audiences, which eventually gave Flying Circus a cult following.
Former KERA logo, used from 2000 until January 2016.
On September 1, 1988, North Texas Public Broadcasting signed on KDTN (channel 2) in Denton to serve as the market's secondary PBS member station, a project which the organization had been working on since May 1977, when it filed an FCC application for a construction permit to build an educational station on VHF channel 2 (North Texas Public Broadcasting would reach an agreement with its lone remaining competitor for the permit in 1984 to obtain the permit). The organization primarily used KDTN to run educational and instructional programs that had previously filled much of KERA's daytime schedule, along with carrying some programs produced by the University of North Texas (the KDTN studio facility was based on the university's campus). At that time, KERA shifted its schedule to offering primarily entertainment programming from PBS and other public television program distributors such as American Public Television; channel 13 also identified Denton as part of the station's service area in station identifications during the period it operated KDTN. . . .
Digital television
The station's digital channel is multiplexed
. . .
Analog-to-digital conversion
In 2003, KERA-TV signed on its digital signal on UHF channel 14. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 13, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on the UHF channel 14 allocation it used during the transition period. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 13."
KTXA-DT Channel 21 leases space for its transmitter at this tower as well. See: (
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"KTXA, virtual channel 21 (UHF digital channel 29), is an independent television station licensed to Fort Worth, Texas, United States and serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of CBS Corporation, as part of a duopoly with CBS owned-and-operated station KTVT (channel 11), also licensed to Fort Worth. The two stations share primary studio facilities on Bridge Street (off of I-30), east of downtown Fort Worth, and advertising sales offices at CBS Tower on North Central Expressway (north of NorthPark Mall) in Dallas; KTXA's transmitter is located south of Belt Line Road in Cedar Hill.
KTXA first signed on the air on October 6, 1980; originally operating as an independent station, it was founded by Grant Broadcasting. The station's original studio facilities were located on Randol Mill Road, adjacent to Six Flags Over Texas and Arlington Stadium in Arlington (although Fort Worth has always been the station's city of license). It ran a general entertainment format of cartoons and sitcoms during the daytime hours, while at night it broadcast the over-the-air subscription television service ONTV, which required a set-top decoder and a subscription fee in order to receive the ONTV signal during programming hours. By 1983, it became a general entertainment station full-time, and added classic movies and off-network drama series.
Grant Broadcasting signed on a similarly formatted station, KTXH in Houston, in 1982. In 1984, both KTXA and KTXH were sold to Gulf Broadcasting, which itself was subsequently purchased by the Taft Television and Radio Company that same year.
KTXA logo in 1987.
From 1985 to 1989, KTXA operated the "Channel 21 Kids' Club"; in short promos that aired between cartoons, area children were encouraged to send off for a membership card that would entitle them to discounts at various local businesses and enable them to participate in on-air prize giveaways. They were blue on the front side and white on the back, with a "KTXA Channel 21 Kids' Club" logo appearing on the front in red and white along with the line "I turned 21". The hostess of these shorts, K.D. Fox, was later featured in many other local promotions for various businesses in the Dallas–Fort Worth area.
The station was unprofitable throughout the 1980s, but Taft kept strong programming on the station (including Hanna-Barbera cartoons and other programs owned by Taft and distributed by Worldvision Enterprises). In February 1987, Taft sold its independent stations—including KTXA—to the TVX Broadcast Group; the purchase was finalized on April 1, 1987. In 1989, Paramount Pictures purchased a minority stake in TVX; two years later on February 28, 1991, Paramount acquired the remaining interest in TVX and renamed the company Paramount Stations Group; KTXA adopted the on-air branding "Paramount 21" during this period. Viacom acquired the stations in 1994 as part of its purchase of Paramount Pictures. Around this time, the station moved its operations to the Paramount Building in the West End district of downtown Dallas.
On January 16, 1995, KTXA became a charter affiliate of the United Paramount Network (UPN); correspondingly, it changed its branding to "UPN 21". After independent station KTVT (channel 11) affiliated with CBS in July 1995, it acquired various syndicated programs that it could not air due to its new network-heavy schedule. It became a UPN owned-and-operated station when Viacom acquired a 50% stake in the network from Chris-Craft Industries in 1996 (up to that point, Paramount maintained only a programming partnership with UPN with Chris-Craft serving as UPN's sole owner).
On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW.[2][3] Former WB affiliate KDAF (channel 33) was named as the market's CW affiliate by way of owner Tribune Broadcasting's multi-station deal with the network, and independent station KDFI (channel 27) was named as Dallas's MyNetworkTV station through its ownership by that network's original co-parent, Fox Television Stations. By default, CBS opted to run KTXA as an independent station.
On December 18, 2013, KTXA announced that it would begin carrying MeTV on digital subchannel 21.2; the network moved to 21.2 on December 23, replacing original Dallas affiliate KTXD-TV (which had controversially dropped the network two months earlier);
this made KTXA the first television station owned by CBS to carry a major subchannel network (sister stations WCBS-TV in New York City and KYW-TV in Philadelphia are the only other CBS-owned stations that maintain subchannel services, both of which operate as locally programmed news channels).
. . .
The station is the over-the-air broadcast outlet for the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and since 2010, Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers and the NHL's Dallas Stars. KTXA will broadcast 25 Rangers games each season (usually Friday games) through the 2014 season and has aired 17 Dallas Stars games annually since the 2010–11 season (KTXA initially aired Dallas Stars games from 1993–1995); KTXA's Rangers telecasts are produced by Fox Sports Southwest and are syndicated to certain stations in the south-central U.S. (such as KCWX in San Antonio and KSBI in Oklahoma City). KTXA airs FC Dallas matches since 2015.
KTXA also serves as the over-the-air broadcaster of Dallas Cowboys regular season games broadcast by either ESPN or NFL Network, in order to satisfy NFL requirements that games be distributed on a broadcast television station in each team's local market for those who do not have access to those networks. KTXA also carried CBS coverage of the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament game between Baylor and Sam Houston State, while KTVT aired North Texas and Kansas State (such arrangements are no longer possible due to the NCAA joint tournament contract with CBS Sports and Turner Sports effective with the 2011 tournament).
KTXA also broadcast college football games from SEC TV (formerly SEC Network), as well as men's basketball games from the Big 12 Network, both of which are operated by ESPN Regional Television. SEC Football broadcasts ended after the 2013–2014 season due to the national launch of the cable-exclusive SEC Network in August 2014 as part of a 20-year agreement between the Southeastern Conference and ESPN.
In order to replace the SEC football broadcasts due to the SEC Network's national presence, KTXA began broadcasting Atlantic Coast Conference football and basketball from the ACC Network, a Raycom Sports-operated ad hoc syndicated sports package that began syndicating to 84% of all U.S. households, beginning with the 2014–2015 season."