Today is
Monday July 27, 2026
Deputies say clues at the scene indicate the body wasn’t there for very long. “We believe she’s been here for less than 24 hours,” said Lt. Tom Dana of the Smith County Sheriff’s Department. “We do believe there’s foul play involved in this death.” Detectives describe her as a young black woman between 18 and 35 years old. She was wearing capri style pants, a black blouse, and white shoes.
TYLER — Jason Wright says he’s humbled to have been elected to Tyler’s City Council. The local businessman bested runoff opponent Kara Camp Saturday, 867 votes to 816, in the race to succeed Charles Alworth in District 6. Wright commented, “What an honor it is…to have the opportunity to be a servant-leader in a city that you love.” He says he can’t wait to get to work and is looking forward to meeting with city officials and staff so he can start learning his way around City Hall. Wright said the Council race was long and hard, but well-run. He added that both he and Camp love the city and want to serve it in any capacity possible.
TYLER — Authorities feel they have a better understanding of what happened over the weekend in the deaths of a Tyler lawyer and his ex-wife. It happened Saturday night in Smith County’s Hidden Hill Lake subdivision where the bodies of Thomas Blow and Kinsey Lynn Lewis-Blow were found. Both had been shot to death. Authorities believe Thomas Blow shot his former wife and then turned the gun on himself.
KETK-TV reported a woman, who authorities say was a friend of Blow’s ex-wife, had dropped her off and was waiting in the drive-way for her to come out. When she never came back to the car, the woman went looking for her, and found the bodies. The couple’s two young boys, ages 5 and 7, who had been staying with their dad for Father’s Day, were not injured.
I sure have missed KDOK and it’s great music. Do you think there will ever be another radio station that will play the kind of music KDOK played in Tyler? There is not a radio station in the area that plays the 60’s,70’s music. Can’t pick up KLUV, station from Dallas. Thank you for a reply.
ANSWER
I cannot speak for other broadcasters in the market. There is always a
chance that one of them will make the business decision to change formats on
one of their stations to something similar to what KDOK did. When and under
what circumstances that might occur, I cannot say.
I miss KDOK, too. I liked listening to it a lot. But it was not a growing
business and it was taking away resources that were necessary to protect and
grow our core franchise, which is news and talk. Playing music on the radio,
and particularly music from a “frozen” playlist, in other words a playlist
that does not continually take in new material, has become a very different
business than it used to be. The proliferation of personal music devices and
the ability to easily interface those devices to the sound system in one’s
vehicle has dramatically chnaged the game for FM radio music broadcasters.
In order to keep time-spent-listening to KDOK at competitive levels, I was
having to spend a ruinous amount of money every year doing focus group
research on the KDOK playlist in order to determine which songs were getting
burned out and which songs needed to be brought back into rotation. The
truth is, it is hard to compete with a person’s iPod. The playlist on a
person’s iPod is the absolutely perfectly researched playlist for that
person. It is particularly true in a format that doesn’t regularly introduce
new music, such as an oldies station like KDOK, that constant music research
is necessary or the audience will not spend as much time listening and that
ratings will suffer.
KLUV in Dallas conducts continuous music research in order to address this
issue. The problem for a similar station in a market like Tyler is that it
costs the same amount to do the research in Tyler as it does to do the
research in Dallas-Ft. Worth. The cost of research as a percentage of KLUV’s
revenue, however, is a fraction of that same cost as a percentage of KDOK’s
revenue.
Thus, we made the decision regarding KDOK and, despite the fact that I miss
KDOK, it has proven to be a good business decision.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Paul L. Gleiser
Yes, if the show in question is part of our MP3/Podcasting program. The following shows are available, for 1 week, for download and podcasting – More information and a list of available podcasts
Yours is a question we get frequently at this time of year as the sun begins rising later and setting earlier. You didn’t specify where you live in the area so my answer will be general in nature. But put simply, as the sun rises and sets, KTBB, like most AM radio stations, changes its power and the direction in which it more strongly radiates its signal.
A little technical information. Radio Frequency energy (RF) in what is commonly called the AM band (535 kHz to 1700 kHz) has a characteristic called the skywave. During the day, ionization of the atmosphere by the sun suppresses the skywave and your receiver detects only the groundwave. But at night, when solar energy is gone, the skywave is “free” to travel great distances. As a result, the skywave of a station in Tyler, Texas can cause severe interference for a station in a state as far away as either coast. The skywave effect diminishes with an increase in frequency (dial position). Therefore, a station that is low on the dial like KTBB at 600 kHz will have a very significant skywave component.
To deal with this physical property of AM radio, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated radio stations in the U.S. in such a way that some stations are fully powered both day and night, a great many stations are only on the air in the daytime and the rest operate at a higher power by day and a lower power by night.
KTBB is in the last group of stations. Our daytime power is 5,000 watts. Our nighttime power is 2,500 watts. We change power at local sunrise and local sunset. As you know, that time changes with the changing of the seasons. As I write this, our power-up time on KTBB is 7:30 a.m. and our power-down time is 7:45 p.m. As I mentioned, those times change as the seasons change.
As if that weren’t enough, KTBB, like most AM stations, uses a directional antenna system. Simply put, we radiate our signal more strongly in some directions than in others. This, too, is to provide protection from interference to stations in other communities that also operate on our frequency (600 kHz) as well as to stations in other communities that operate on frequencies adjacent to ours (580 kHz, 590 kHz, 610 kHz, and 620 kHz). Our directional pattern changes for daytime and nighttime operation at the same times that our power changes. Our pattern is such that we do not radiate as strongly to the east toward Longview at night as we do in the daytime.
The question that always follows is, “Well, can’t you do something to raise your power.” And the answer that must follow is, “No, we can’t.” The AM Table of Allotments for the United States is a giant jigsaw puzzle. What we do will affect our neighboring AM stations, which will affect their neighbors and so on. So what we have is for all intents and purposes fixed. I hope this answers your question.
You can view a table listing of the AVERAGE HOURS OF SUNRISE AND SUNSET by clicking on the link below:
http://www.ktbb.com/sunhours.php
I appreciate your interest.
Paul L. Gleiser
President
ANSWER
David Smoak left KTBB for reasons that we cannot disclose at this time.
Bill Coates is now hosting SportsTalk every weekday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. on KTBB FM 92.1. Bill is an experienced, talented, network-quality sports broadcasting professional with over 30 years in the business and over 19 years at KTBB. Bill brings and encyclopedic knowledge of professional, collegiate and high school sports together with an easy, inviting conversational style. We are excited to have Bill on the air in a long-form format and we expect him to take SportsTalk to a new level in the coming months.
I was wondering to what measures KTBB has taken in light of the FCC’s recent power trip.
In recent months, the FCC has been cracking down on certain shows and programs in various areas in the country. I realize that the programming on KTBB and the other stations that your company owns shouldn’t have problems with program content and shows such as “Bubba the Love Sponge” and “Howard Stern” will never make it to the Tyler market. With that said, I am sure that pressure from the FCC has affected your stations in some form or fashion.
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You all have a very classy site. The images are always crisp and there is a minimum of nonsense throughout. You have a good sense of what is news and what is hype – unlike your source (ABC) some of the other media outlets, local and national.
I especially applaud you on your advertising being local and tasteful – and free of the ultra annoying doubleclick, Bonzi Buddy, weatherbug
and google addcents offerings. It’s a reflection of the radio station/broadcast in that there is a level of professionalism immediately apparent.
Question: Is it hard to maintain this higher standard in this day of flashing, obnoxious ads and content? Do you feel that there is a higher reward and/or return in such a high standard? Or does your web market simply make it impossible to do otherwise?
ANSWER
Thank you for your kind words and for taking the time to share them.
We have done our best to make http://www.ktbb.com the best possible reflection of our commitment to high standards on the air at Newstalk 600 KTBB.We want there to be a seamless relationship between what we do on the radio and what we do on the web.
We decline opportunities to sell advertising on KTBB AM 600 nearly every week. Most of the ads we decline are selling things we can’t in good conscience inflict on our listeners. Examples include products that purport to enhance sexual performance, get-rich-quick-in-the-comfort-of-your-home schemes, miracle weight loss products, multi-level marketing programs and other products and services that are fraudulent, close to fraudulent or in bad taste.
Less frequently, we decline advertising on KTBB AM 600 because the commercial is overly loud or is in some other way obnoxious or offensive.
We attempt to apply the same standards to our websites, including http://www.ktbb.com. We pursue good content, we try to present it in a useful way that is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate and we do not pursue advertising revenue opportunities that we don’t control.
Therefore, you will not see “hit the monkey” ads or pop-ups or Google ads on ktbb.com.
It is more gratifying than I can tell you that you noticed.
Thanks for coming to the site and thanks for sharing your input with us.
Paul L. Gleiser
President
I understand that there was a major “changing of the guard” involving several key radio stations in the area. I don’t remember all of the call letters for these stations but one station was KOOI, which we listen to here in Tyler.
How does a deal like this change and affect our market? Do you think that there will be format changes for these stations?
Also – I understand that your company had been interested in a share of that deal… is that true?
Thanks for your time
ANSWER
Yes, some changes in ownership have recently taken place in the Tyler-Longview market.
Waller Broadcasting sold several of its radio stations to a company called Access.1 Communications. Access.1 is headquarted in New York and they own stations in several other markets in addition to Tyler-Longview.
The stations that Mr. Waller sold include: KOOI 106.5 FM, KKUS 104.1 FM, KYKX 105.7 FM, KOYE 96.7 FM and KFRO 1370 AM.
It is impossible to know what, if anything, Access.1 will do with respect to changing the formats of any of these stations. That will depend on their best judgment as to the value of the respective assets in their current setup vs. what they believe they might do to enhance the value of the assets by doing something else.
And yes, Gleiser Communications, LLC very vigorously pursued purchasing many of these stations when Mr. Waller offered them for sale. Ultimately, we were not able to come to terms that made sense for us and Access.1 was able to make a deal that made sense to them.
For our part, we continue to believe in radio as a great medium for both listeners and advertisers. And believing that, we also believe that strong operators in our market serve to drive all of us to do a better job.
Toward that end, we wish Access.1 well and we welcome them to East Texas.
Thank you for your input.
Paul L. Gleiser
President