Did’ja Know The First TV Station In El Paso Is Now A Radio Station?

In about a month, the first tv station El Paso ever had will celebrate its 72nd anniversary ... and it's not a TV station anymore.

Yep, TV in El Paso is under 80. It's hard to believe, as much as tv impacts our lives and the ease with which we can now watch it from pretty much anywhere in the world, that there are lots of people alive today who remember when TV didn't even exist here.

December 14th, 1952, KROD went on the air. Those call letters were eventually reassigned and now belong to KLAQ's sister station, 600 ESPN El Paso. (600 AM)

The call letter flip happened in 1973 when KROD became KDBC, (channel 4), and it's not the only time local radio and TV stations have changed their call letters.

Back in '52, this was a BIG deal for El Paso and TV was way different than it is today. For one thing, it wasn't 24/7. TV stations went off the air at 11-ish though weekends they might stay on 'til midnight or 1. Then they played the national anthem and you only had a test pattern to stare at until around 6am the next morning.

According to the El Paso Times, KROD didn't even give their viewers that much at first: "The 1:30 to 10 p.m. schedule will prevail on Sundays, according to present plans, Lawrence said. Weekday telecasts will be from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m." Learn more here.

Wow, 6 whole hours of grainy, black and white, local, in studio talk and entertainment shows along with the news. These days, local news isn't that big of a deal at KDBC.

At least they had live, in studio wrestling to add a little excitement.