The broadcast tower on Browne’s Mountain for the Spokane, WA, public TV station, KSPS, partially collapsed last week. Approximately 200ft of the top of the tower and antenna collapsed at around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 29, knocking the station off the air both on its analog and digital channels (where it broadcast HDTV programming). An antenna used by MyNetworkTV affiliate KXMN-TV was also lost in the tower collapse.
The digital and cable signals for both KSPS and KXMN were not affected by the tower's collapse. No station personnel were injured, because the transmission site was unattended at the time.
Engineering crews said the new top-mounted DTV antenna suffered some sort of structural failure, which then swung into two guy lines at the top portion of the 500ft broadcast tower. About 300ft of the tower remains standing but was heavily damaged. As of last week, the station was unable to broadcast an off-air signal, but could still be viewed on cable, satellite and in Canada.
Station engineers are now inspecting the tower to figure out what happened. A station spokesperson told KREM 2 News it was unknown whether the tower could be repaired.
The tower is used to transmit over-the-air terrestrial TV signals for KSPS on channel 7 and KXMN-TV on channel 11.
