Ken Hall is not a retiring kind of guy. Having started his own tower company in 1993, Towers, Inc., with 13 towers in his inventory, Hall grew it to 24 towers before American Tower…a brash new start-up at the time…took notice. “I was their 13th employee,” Hall said once they absorbed his Carolina-based firm. “They wanted me to stay on for a few months during the transition period,” he said. “19-and-a-half years later, I decided it was time to retire.”
Hall specialized in helping broadcasters relocate on American’s growing inventory of sites and, by his estimate, brought over 600 radio and TV stations into the big company’s fold.
Hall, 69, realized after a few short months in retirement he missed the business and wanted to stay in touch with the myriad of contacts he made over the years. “I love this business,” he said. His niche for starting KH Tower Consulting centered on the people he knew best: the broadcasters. He felt his special role was as an intermediary, a facilitator, between the tower community and the broadcast community. “The towers guys aren’t familiar with broadcast and broadcasters aren’t familiar with towers,” Hall said. “They speak two different languages.”
The current auction will not only present new challenges to the broadcast community, Hall said, but impact other tower owners as well. “It appears it will succeed,” he said “although not to the extent the broadcasters had hoped. Dividing up $10 billion among 200 broadcasters after they were counting on $80 billion is a bit of a letdown.” Nonetheless, the “re-pack” will be an enormous undertaking in changing out over 1,000 antennas nationwide in 39 months time. “All broadcasters should soon begin the process of understanding the possible impact that the television repack may have on their operation,” he said. Hall is slightly skeptical as to whether there are enough crews to facilitate the re-pack. Most broadcasters, he said, will have to relocate to accommodate the change-over and he hopes to be of service in making that transition. Non-broadcast owners may suffer transition pangs as well if they are grouped with nearby broadcast sites as work on taking down the thousand-pound antennas will create a temporary disturbance to any site, and particularly a tower “farm.”
Hall is optimistic about the future of towers and broadcasting and thinks low-power tv might help revitalize the business. All in all he’s glad to be “back in the business” during an interesting and changing time in the industry’s history. Contact info is: KH Tower Consulting, (803) 936-0095, kenhall.towers@gmail.com.
January 20, 2017
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