KTEK High-Tech

“Where are you?” the caller asks.
I can hear tires singing against the grooves in the pavement in the background.
Sounds like a tollway.
He’s in Houston.
“I’m in Houston, and I can’t hear you,” he says, a touch of anxiety in his voice.

It’s a quarter to 7 in the morning, and our new transmitter at 1110am is precluded from powering-up until the sun rises. In February, the FCC has determined the sun comes up at 7am.

“We’ll be on in just a few minutes,” I reassure him. “You can’t hear us until we sign-on in Houston,” I explain. (Or unless you log-on to the internet and catch our stream.)

It’s one of those arcane necessities in the Radio world, dictated by the physics of geography and dial position, and merely managed by the Federal Communications Commission.

In Houston, our new dial position, 1110am, is shared by several other stations in the country. The closest is in Shreveport. There’s another one in Mexico, best I can tell, based upon the programming I can hear skipping through the atmosphere before sunrise.

We knew this would be the case when The BizRadio Network acquired KTEK-AM. We ran across this hurdle when we were running our business-talk programming a few years back on that CBS Radio station, also a “daytimer.”

Funny thing is, the harder it was to pick us up, the more popular we became. Have become, too, if these calls are any indication.

The first few days in our new facilities have not been without challenges. The best-laid plans of mice and men should always have a back-up, and a Plan-C in some cases.

Fortunately, we do.

No one is going to mistake us for MSNBC.

I doubt you’ll confuse my studio with Howard Stern’s (and how would you know??) But it is serviceable, and we believe, for the temporary tabernacle that it is, it sounds pretty decent.

Can’t wait to show you the permanent studios we’re planning. More about that in the Spring.

See you in the morning on the Radio…

Jack Warkenthien broadcasts from The BizRadio Network Broadcasting Complex & Deli