KAHO-LD about to take its final zombie steps to Houston

The FCC has granted Hosanna Apostolic Ministries’ application to move KAHO-LD from its supposed transmitter site in Mont Belvieu to the J.P. Morgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston. The other KxHO stations, all owned by shell companies of Hispanic Christian Community Network, are licensed to broadcast from that location.

I have covered the station’s zombie walk from Woodville to Mont Belvieu before.

It doesn’t need saying, but expect religious stations to air over channel 4 once construction is complete.

KAHO granted its license

In an action that should surprise no one, KAHO was granted its license to cover its construction permit, which purports that the station has been built out with a transmitter in Mont Belvieu.

Expect its next step to be filing to take the station silent, then filing for a transmitter move to downtown Houston.

Update 1:30 pm: I took another trip out to the purported transmitter site and found no evidence of a TV station broadcasting on channel 4.

Check out this map which shows KAHO’s purported service contour. Woodville, its city of license, is way at the top of the map.

It’s alive! Except when it’s not…

(This post has been edited: I jumped the gun. KAHO has only applied for their license to cover, not been granted it yet.)

As I predicted last month, Hosanna Apostolic Missionaries Broadcasting Corporation has applied for a license to cover its application to move KAHO-LD channel 4 from the Devers tower in Liberty County to a location in Mont Belvieu just off I-10 and state highway 146. This means the station says it’s through with construction, and the station is on the air according to their application.

To prove a point, I drove out to the purported transmitter location to see if channel 4 was broadcasting. (Its 100-watt power drastically limits the station’s potential coverage area.) Sure enough, with my TV located only a few meters away from the purported transmitter, I received no signal at all on channel 4, either analog or digital.

I then drove to Devers, to within line-of-sight of the earlier purported transmitter location. The only signal I received at that location was KBTV-DT from Beaumont.

I can make no representation that KAHO-LD has ever been on the air. I can only say it was not on the air today, the day after it applied for its license to cover the construction permit that moved it to Mont Belvieu.

The FCC may finally be coming around to the problem of “zombie stations”. Today it has asked the licensee of W250BN, an FM translator in West Allis, Wisconsin to justify its hop-skip-and-jump move from Beloit, Wisconsin. This instance is being handled by the Audio Division of the Media Bureau; the problem is the same with low-power TV stations.

Another zombie starting its walk toward Houston

“Zombie stations” is my phrase for low-power stations that exploit FCC rules to move from smaller towns into larger markets.

I’ve stumbled across another station that seems to be making moves toward Houston from an outlying area, in this case, Woodville, in Tyler County.

I present to you the evidence against KAHO-LD. (Note the similar call sign to KEHO, KQHO and KZHO, three zombies that have walked into Houston already. The station’s former call sign was K04QT-D; that was changed to the current KAHO-LD on October 7, 2011.)

KAHO is licensed to Hosanna Apostolic Ministries Broadcasting Corporation on channel 4. Their transmitter is currently listed as being on the Devers tower (sound familiar? It should). They were taken off the air in February 2011, saying “there is a need to take the station off the air temporarily in order to make use of the transmitter temporarily at another location in conjunction with another station.”

They have applied for a new transmitter location near Baytown, on an existing tower north of I-10 and east of SH-146.

Expect the FCC to grant this application, along with the inevitable next application to move to the JP Morgan Chase Tower downtown and change the city of license to Houston.

I ask the following: Has this station ever legitimately been on the air?