The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority plans to take advantage of the deconstructing of the tower in their “backyard” by turning it into an “educational opportunity.”
A year and a half ago Griffin Communications announced they would be taking the tower down, a “business decision due to liability issues” according to OETA Executive Director Dan Schiedel.
“They haven’t been on it for a number of years,” said Schiedel. “They’ve actually been off the tower and up the road, where we are at now, for a number of years now.”
That tower, American tower, is also shared with KSBI-TV. The transfer of from tower to tower actually has happened earlier than scheduled which will enable the deconstruction of the Griffin tower to begin next week.
The breakdown of the tower will be videotaped and also high-resolution photograph will be taken every eight to ten seconds by a time-lapse camera.
"We'll basically create some educational opportunities out of this as part of a STEM project that we're working with education folks and our production people to develop some educational tools for the classroom and make will make available online and DVD," said Schiedel. "There will be videos, short segments that will be teachable moments if you will talking about the engineering that went into the grating of the roads to the engineering of the release and tension on the lines at the appropriate time to how they deconstruct something that's been there for sixty years."
Schiedel described the project as an e-learning digital project that is primary for online use.
The disassembly is will continue for a month and a half to two months “depending on the crews and the weather” according to Schiedel. He also said moving the transmitter to a new location would increase the agency's annual operating costs by $173,000.
