On November 27, 1952, KTBC-TV went on the air from a small studio in the Driskill Hotel, the first television station in Austin and Central Texas. The station belonged to the Texas Broadcasting Company, owned by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, and it grew out of a struggling radio station she had bought nine years earlier. The broadcasting business became the main source of the Johnson family fortune. Lady Bird Johnson bought radio station KTBC in early 1943 for $17,500 from her inheritance. It was then a daytime station at 1150 on the dial, sharing the frequency at night with the A&M College station. She was the owner of record with the Federal Communications Commission while her husband sat in Congress. After the sale the station won permission to move to 590 and broadcast around the clock, and in 1945 the FCC approved a fivefold power increase. William S. Paley's CBS made KTBC an affiliate, after Austin rival KNOW had been turned down.
When the FCC allocated television licenses in the early 1950s, Austin was given one commercial station, and the Johnsons were the only applicant. Hemmed in by signals from San Antonio, Houston and Waco, Austin had room for just one VHF channel, so KTBC-TV carried programs from all four networks of the day. The Johnsons sold the television station to the Times Mirror Company in the early 1970s, and the radio stations became KLBJ.
Getting there
30.2680, -97.7416
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