• My Account
  • Your Profile
  • Member Archives
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Cart / $0.00

No products in the cart.

Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links
No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

No products in the cart.

No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
No Result
View All Result

Site of the Week 11/27/15: South Mountain, Phoenix, 2015

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
November 27, 2015
in Arizona, Free Content, Tower Site of the Week
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

SPRING IS HERE…

And if you don’t have your Tower Site Calendar, now’s the time!

If you’ve been waiting for the price to come down, it’s now 30 percent off!

This year’s cover is a beauty — the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. Both the towers and the landscape are gorgeous.

And did you see? Tower Site of the Week is back, featuring this VOA site as it faces an uncertain future. 

Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (buy the calendar to find out which ones!).

We still have a few of our own calendars left – as well as a handful of Radio Historian Calendars – and we are still shipping regularly.

The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025, too. Why not order both?) 

Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the new calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too! 

 

If you’ve gone to Phoenix and haven’t gone up South Mountain, have you really gone to Phoenix at all?

South Mountain from below...
South Mountain from below…

...and closer up
…and closer up

This is simultaneously one of the most remarkable and most accessible TV/FM mountaintop tower farms out there: it’s just a 20-minute or so drive up a nice paved road through a public park (largest county park in America!) to the gate that leads into this majestic farm that’s home to pretty much all of the market’s TV and FM action.

At the gate
At the gate

View to the north
View to the north

It’s not hard to understand why this is such a superior site: from the brow of the mountain, the view to the north encompasses nearly the entire sprawl that is the Phoenix metro, with very little shadowing except the bit that comes from Piestewa Peak and its sister peaks up north of downtown.

KSLX 100.7
KSLX 100.7

KZON 101.5
KZON 101.5
KZON and KSLX
KZON and KSLX
Filtering at KZON
Filtering at KZON

On earlier trips up South Mountain, we’d been inside only one other building, Bonneville’s 92.3/98.7 pair – but this time, our tour guide had access to a few more FMs, starting with the pair of guyed towers that sit to themselves far at the west end of the tower farm.

These sticks are Hubbard classic rocker KSLX (100.7 Scottsdale) and CBS Radio’s KZON (101.5 Phoenix), and their separate small buildings at the base of each tower are near mirror-images, each with a new Nautel transmitter (GV40 for KSLX, NV40 for KZON, augmented by a smaller Nautel aux) and each featuring filtering to keep its neighbor station from creating intermod.

KOOL 94.5
KOOL 94.5

KMLE 107.9
KMLE 107.9

Up in the core of the mountain, we get to see something that won’t be there much longer: CBS Radio’s other two FMs, KOOL (94.5) and KMLE (107.9) are wedged tightly into a room that’s part of the building that houses Fox O&O KSAZ-TV (Channel 10). KOOL has been here for many decades, going back to when channel 10 was KOOL-TV; KMLE moved in later on, and now both stations are moving to a new space that was cleared out when KSAZ shut down its interim digital operation and went back to channel 10 for digital. (Which means we need to come back again sometime to see the post-move facility!)

KAET's lobby
KAET’s lobby

KAET master control
KAET master control

A busy day in Phoenix still has one more late-afternoon stop: the city’s public TV station, KAET (Channel 8), moved a few years ago from the main Arizona State University campus in Tempe to the Cronkite School’s new building right in downtown Phoenix, and we get a quick peek at it before the end of business hours (and before we’re off to see the Diamondbacks beat the Dodgers.)

KAET’s master control is glassed in just off the lobby, which is down the hall from the big TV studios that are shared by Channel 8 and the Cronkite School. (The J-school produces its own nightly newscast, “Cronkite News,” that airs on KAET.)

KAET studio
KAET studio

KAET studio
KAET studio

On the day we’re visiting, they’re getting ready for production on a local version of Antiques Roadshow; I think that was some lighting testing going on when we peeked into the big studio.

Sound studios
Central Sound

Sound studios
Central Sound

One floor down, there’s a nifty facility that serves multiple purposes: Central Sound @ Eight handles audio post-production on KAET’s broadcasts and also serves KBAQ (89.5), the classical station jointly operated by ASU and the local community college. That sweet sweetening suite shown above is a surround-sound post room where Alex Kosiorek and his Central Sound team mix down everything from symphony broadcasts to student productions.

Thanks to CBS Radio’s Eric Schechter and KAET’s Eric Xu for the tours!

And don’t miss a big batch of cross-country IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: Las Vegas

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
Tags: KAETKMLEKOOLKSLXKZON
Previous Post

NERW 11/23/15: Bell Cuts Go Deep

Next Post

NERW 11/30/2015: Rivera Out at WABC

Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

Editor/Publisher, NorthEast Radio Watch and Tower Site of the Week

Related Posts

NERW 12/15/2014: CRTC Drains Niagara Simulcast
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 5/12/2025: New Owners For Two AMs

In this week’s issue… Catsimatidis, Shula add signals - Radiodays rocks Toronto - Ex-Bell, Evanov stations rebrand By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME - NH - VT - MA - RI - CT - NY - NJ - PA -...

by Scott Fybush
May 13, 2025
Top of the Tower Podcast #061: Rob Bertrand at NAB/PREC 2025
Free Content

Top of the Tower Podcast #061: Rob Bertrand at NAB/PREC 2025

Top of the Tower talks with Inrush Broadcast's Rob Bertrand about the future of broadcast engineering as a service

by Scott Fybush
May 6, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 5/5/2025: Public Media’s Uncertain Future
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 5/5/2025: Public Media’s Uncertain Future

In this week’s issue… Public media faces a CPB-less future - Elections change broadcasters' fates - Another AM goes silent - K-Love buys in PA, Holy Family sells in Mass. - Bell hands off Peterborough stations

by Scott Fybush
May 5, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 4/28/2025: Letterman’s Maine Surprise
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 4/28/2025: Letterman’s Maine Surprise

In this week’s issue… "Nite Show" goes out in style - Remembering Erie's McKay - Rhodes retires in Scranton, Russo in Buffalo - Islanders drop radio team

by Scott Fybush
April 28, 2025
Next Post
NERW 11/30/2015: Rivera Out at WABC

NERW 11/30/2015: Rivera Out at WABC

Log In

Join Now | Lost Password?

Get Fybush.com Updates

Get Fybush.com updates emailed directly to your inbox!

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.