Deconstruction Work Begins At KWTV's Historic Broadcast Tower

Deconstruction work has officially begun at the historic broadcast tower at KWTV News 9 in Oklahoma City, Tuesday morning.

At about 9:30 a.m., the antenna at the very top of the tower was removed. The entire deconstruction process will take about four weeks to complete.

The broadcast tower at KWTV News 9 once held a pretty impressive world record. The tower stands at more than 1,572 feet tall, around 300 feet higher than the Empire State Building, making it at one time the world's tallest manmade structure.

7/28/2014 Related Story: End of An Era: KWTV To Take Down Historic Broadcast Tower

So tall, in fact, Griffin decided against the call letters KOMA, and instead chose KWTV, standing for “world's tallest video”.

The tower cost $650,000 to build back then, that would be just over $3 million today. And here are some other facts worth noting: 100,000 pounds of bolts were used in constructing the tower with an overall weight of one million pounds, 28,690 feet of cable was used, 770 gallons of paint is needed for just one coat and 14,400 watts of power is needed to light it up. It also has a one man electric elevator for workers to use for antenna and tower maintenance.

From black and white to now high definition, the tower has served us well, but now it's time for it to come down. This doesn't mean News 9 is going off the air. The TV business has changed and we simply don't use the tower anymore. That's why we are having the KWTV tower taken down.

We've hired a company that specializes in removing broadcast towers to come in and take it down piece by piece this fall. Once it's down, a scrap metal company will take it to be recycled.

With the change to digital from analog signals, our News 9 signal moved to a different tower that is a shared tower with other stations.