KNON DJ Gene Soslow broadcasting with temporary equipment from a small office in the station’s new space. (David Taffet/Dallas Voice)
KNON-FM, home of Lambda Weekly, an LGBT radio show that’s broadcast weekly since 1983, has found a new home. Its studio was demolished in the tornado that cut a swatch of destruction across North Dallas.
The new studio is on Coit Road, a few blocks north of LBJ, about a mile from its previous location.
After the tornado, the station was knocked off the air for about 36 hours. Since then, it has been broadcasting from a shed at its transmitter and tower in Cedar Hill with very limited equipment.
On Tuesday, Nov. 19, station manager Dave Chaos signed a new lease and by Friday, programming began using one small office in the new building while the rest of the space is built out.
Chaos said he expects construction to be complete sometime in December. One hold-up may be the board. While the equipment from the old studio was saved, he said it’s damaged from glass flying around the studio. Shards of glass got into the board and may have destroyed it.
Because KNON is a non-profit, non-commercial station, Chaos said he’s hoping another station in the area that may have recently upgraded its equipment would have a board they’d like to donate.
In the mean time, DJs are broadcasting sitting at folding tables with just two microphones and two CD players hooked up to a small board that’s plugged into a panel with a phone line sending the signal to the transmitter in Cedar Hill.
At least the new studio is quiet and two people in the studio can hear each other. The transmitter made so much noise that at times two people sitting just a few feet apart in the shed in Cedar Hill couldn’t hear each other.
And there was one other concern at the transmitter. Located in a large field with a dozen other broadcast towers, on-the-air DJs spent a large part of their time watching the floor. The shed they were broadcasting from was infested with scorpions.
— David Taffet
