‘Studio 8’: Texas Broadcast Museum in Kilgore opens new exhibit

Published 5:35 am Monday, March 24, 2025

From Staff Reports

Kilgore’s Texas Broadcast Museum has opened a new exhibit where guests can jump into the fast-paced world of television broadcast news.

Museum founder and Director Chuck Conrad said a shipment of vintage broadcast equipment delivered to the museum last fall provided everything needed to recreate a working broadcast studio. Conrad’s friend and longtime Broadcast Museum benefactor, Paul Beck, drove a 26-foot Penske truck full of items from the New England area to deliver the haul.

“We have assembled (the equipment) into a working TV studio with six cameras,” Conrad said. “It is a good replica of what an actual TV studio looks like, although not many stations have more than two or three cameras. We call this new exhibit ‘Studio 8.’ ”

Some of the equipment used in the new exhibit came from Boston, New York and Houston. Conrad regularly receives new items to put on display, sometimes donated by collectors. Other pieces come from other similar museums around the country.

Conrad said the new exhibit, which joins the museum’s ever-growing collection of thousands of individual pieces of broadcast equipment from across the decades, is already getting good reviews.

“It is up and working doing exactly what it is supposed to do — giving our visitors a chance to actually operate real studio equipment,” he said. “Recently a school group arrived and the kids loved it.”

To learn more about the museum or to schedule a tour, visit texasbroadcastmuseum.com/.