THV11 history

In 1924, Jay Palmer Beard was searching hobby magazines, looking for a circuit diagram of a radio receiving set when he found a drawing of a low-powered radio transmitter.

On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, and the “Great Depression” was launched.

An engineer from Little Rock was brought up to Paragould to help build a new transmitter and studios and Poindexter writes that the station made its first official broadcast March 16, 1930.

The station also became vital in sharing information with the public, first during a massive flood that struck in 1937 and again during World War II, airing late breaking reports at all hours of the day and night via the Mutual Broadcasting System.

In 1942, KBTM moved into what Poindexter describes as an “ultra modern new building” at 603 Madison in Jonesboro.

Workers lay out the three bay FM antenna for KBTM in 1947 before installing it on the tower.

24 years after officially starting KBTM, Jay Beard decided to sell the stations in 1954.

The photo to the left is from a newspaper ad that ran in 1955, touting the 25th anniversary of KBTM. King apparently had big aspirations and around the same time period also bought Little Rock station KGHI-AM 1250.

By 1962, almost 800 cable systems serving 850,000 subscribers were in business.

He started with KBTM in August 1965, just before the start of his sophomore year at Arkansas State University.

Dennis Rogers on the air at KBTM in 1967.

In February 1968 Dennis left Jonesboro after being hired by Plough radio station WMPS in Memphis, Tennessee.

So if you were one of the 18 people in Craighead County that had an FM radio in 1970, you heard the same record over and over.

A newspaper ad in the Jonesboro Sun, December 15, 1974, announcing the debut of the new Stereo 102 that night at midnight.

Snider sold KFIN to Larry Duke in 1978, who had worked for Snider in Little Rock and was later general manager of KFIN, before buying the station.

David Wallace was hired as news director at KBTM-AM/FM in 1981 and would eventually take over anchoring The Morning Herald.

More than 13 years after starting in radio at KBTM, Randy Hankins on the air at KKYK in 1982 in Little Rock, by that time going by the air name Craig O’Neill.

Deregulation provided by the 1984 Act had a strong positive effect on the rapid growth of cable services.

KJBR bumper sticker from 1987.

Much of the KJBR air staff in 1988: (left going clockwise) Jennifer Reed (Bradford), Phil Jamison (Roy Hill), Adam Brock (Mark Pulley), Randy Meyers, Doug Miller, Andy Lockwood (Robert Lockwood), and Dana Beard.

A KBTM St Louis Cardinals bumper sticker, circa 1989.

Governor Bill Clinton on the air with Dennis Rogers on KJBR on January 17, 1990.

To the right is Phil Jamison in 1991 at the Twin Rivers prom, about 50 miles northwest of Jonesboro.

After leaving Kiss-FM in 1993, Dennis Rogers went into retail management at a Jonesboro pool and spa store.

By the spring of 1998, the number of national cable video networks had grown to 171.

In 2001, partly in response to those demands, AT&T agreed to fold its cable systems with those of Comcast Corp., creating the largest ever cable operator with more than 22 million customers.

Talks to resolve issues related to “two-way” digital television sets began in 2003 and continue.

Below are two more photos from that afternoon in 2004 with Dennis, me (Michael Hibblen) and Phil.

Results at the end of the Third Quarter of 2005 provide ample evidence of the growth potential of cable’s new position as a broadband provider.