The Texas Museum of Broadcasting and Communications in Kilgore, Texas, has been on my bucket list since it was highlighted by a Sept, 1, 2016, article in Radio World, titled “The Birthing of a Broadcast Museum.” It became a destination for my wife Paula and me on a recent driving trip from Minnesota to Texas. 

The third studio was recently assembled using 1980s gear. The console is a PR&E that came from KLBJ Radio in Austin, Texas.  Chuck is a fount of knowledge about historic equipment and events. One of the museum’s TV cameras was present when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in 1963.
 

Chuck said people keep donating items. There are hundreds of antique radios, microphones, audio consoles, tape recorders, audio processors and transmitters, along with television cameras and video switchers. There is still space for more, at least for now. The back rooms look like they are filling up fast. 
 

One of the latest acquisitions is a television news set where visitors can sit and have their photos taken while appearing as news anchors on camera. Paula and I bit on that one.
The Birthing of a Broadcast Museum
Kilgore, a town of about 15,000 people, is in northeast Texas. It is 120 miles east of Dallas and 72 miles west of Shreveport, La. If you are traveling on Interstate 20 between Dallas and Shreveport, it is just a few minutes’ detour into town. It’s worth taking the time for an adventure, a step back into broadcasting’s history.