I usually like to let dhett's excellent Arizona Station Update have the top slot here on the blog for several days before posting something else, but this month will have to be an exception.

I have sad news to report. Reader, contributor, and friend Terry Knab, of Springfield, Missouri, died yesterday afternoon (October 2) after suffering a pair of strokes on September 27.

Terry found me in March 2008, around the time that RabbitEars only had a text list of subchannels and not the extensive collection of data it has today. We chatted via AOL Instant Messenger, and his first message to me was a correction to the Springfield data I had, which was sparse at the time. The second day we chatted, the chat ran until 4AM and covered all manner of TV subjects. Our near-daily conversations after that rarely deviated from that subject. When I needed opinions on something, he always gave an honest and constructive opinion, and more than a few changes to site layout and presentation were made on the basis of his opinion. More than once, he was able to help me or put me in touch with friends of his who could help me with rather difficult issues I had with the site, like figuring out what font I had used to make the RabbitEars logo, and with testing of the Mobile RabbitEars code on hardware besides my own.

In more recent times, I got busy with work and other things in life. I still received messages from him at least once per week, and answered as often as I was at my computer to do so. Our most recent conversation of length was on September 17, when we discussed the sale of KCAU, WOI, and WHBF to Nexstar. I had been planning to chat with him last Friday (September 27) about the subchannel shuffle in Kansas City to get his thoughts and opinions, as well as any information he may have picked up that I missed (he did quite often), but he was not online. Later that evening, I saw the bad news on Facebook.

I feel very sad that I never got to meet him in person. In 2011, I nearly went to Springfield for a job interview and would have met him while I was there, but I was offered the position at Luken before that happened and thus never made it out there. I eventually hoped to get out to Springfield on a road trip with Elizabeth, and still hope to do so, though it won't be the same now.

Terry Knab. September 6, 1973 - October 2, 2013. He was 40. It was much too soon.

You will be missed.