A missing radio tower silences “The Sound of Walker County”
3,500-pound spire was dragged away by thieves
JASPER, ALA.>> The radio tower peeking out over dense woods and poultry farms had an AM signal just strong enough to serve WJLX’S intended audience: the people in and around Jasper, Ala., who wanted to hear Jasper High School’s Friday night football broadcasts and news of the burger specials at Alabama Stackers on 19th Street.
Then “The Sound of Walker County,” as the station has long billed itself, went silent.
The tower, all 190 feet of it, had vanished — its 3,500 pounds of spindly steel beams possibly sliced into pieces and dragged away this month by thieves, police said.
“Who in the world steals a radio tower?” said Brett Elmore, the station manager, recalling his bewildered reaction when a maintenance worker explained to him why the station he often calls “my life” had been knocked off the air.
The disappearance has made for one of the more puzzling cases taken on by the Jasper Police Department, which has had few leads so far.
Many in Jasper, a city of about 14,000 that lies 40 miles northwest of Birmingham, fear the culprits have taken more than a heap of steel.
Listeners describe WJLX as a trusted source for local news and warnings of extreme weather, breaking through the noise of a cluttered landscape on radio, television and the internet with something that felt distinctly theirs.
That lifeline, broadcasting over the AM airwaves since 1957, has been severed. For Sherrie Pike, 54, that means morning commutes without WJLX’S shows and music, including a daily sermon from the Church of Christ on Sixth Avenue.
“Everyone loves the radio station because it’s all we have,” Pike said Feb. 10, sitting in her popup jewelry shop near the creamcolored courthouse downtown. “I think everyone’s first reaction to the news was, ‘Oh, no, we’re going to lose our station.’”
Radio stations have long served as accessible sources of information for residents across the rural South, where many areas lack reliable cellphone service and broadband internet.
Alabama’s healthy listenership has survived the rise of the internet and streaming partly because of its residents’ love of high school football, said Sharon Tinsley, president of the Alabama Broadcasters Association. The booming voices of broadcasters often can be heard crackling on county roads and in backyards, as touchdowns elicit guttural cheers.
But people in the radio business say it is their role during severe weather that brings them the most pride. The medium often has been credited with helping save lives after cell towers go down or TV broadcasts shut off.
“These rural communities across the country, I think it’s safe to say, live and die by their local radio stations,” Tinsley said.
More than 82 million Americans listen to AM radio monthly, according to the 2022 Nielsen fall survey. Still, radio stations have recently faced an existential threat as carmakers have considered, and in some cases gone ahead with, dropping AM radios from their newer models. Broadcasters say such decisions will deprive drivers of a crucial source of news in emergencies.
Jasper abruptly has found itself so deprived. Elmore said the tower was not insured. Getting a new one would cost $60,000 to $100,000, he said, an exorbitant price for a station the size of WJLX (it has three full-time employees).
Elmore said he asked the Federal Communications Commission last week if he could use a nearby FM translator station to stay on the air. But the FCC said stations need an AM tower to be allowed to use an FM translator.
The FCC said it was “sorry to learn of the theft of the radio tower that brought this station off air” and that it was “happy to help out in any way possible within the law.”
For Elmore, 40, who followed in his father’s broadcasting footsteps at WJLX, the theft has forced him to project optimism to anyone who asks about the case. They’ll be fine, he promises.
But when he drives the 3 miles from his duplex to WJLX’S headquarters, he sighs thinking about the sound residents will hear when they twist the dial to his station: static.
One of the more promising theories is that the tower was taken for its metal, although workers at scrap-yard companies in the area said in interviews that they had not seen anything suspicious come in.
There are, however, some precedents in Alabama. In 2021, police in Dothan arrested a man who had stolen a 30-foot aluminum trailer with a collapsible radio tower that reached up to 100 feet. And in summer 2013, police in Talladega said a 75-foot steel radio tower and other equipment had been stolen from a broadcasting group.
WJLX continues to broadcast online, but it is reaching a smaller audience because many people, especially older residents, prefer to listen in their cars. Remarkably, its advertisers, nearly all of which are local businesses, have still bought ads, said Terrell Manasco, 61, who helps run sales at the station.
“They just have faith that we’re going to get back on and be stronger,” Manasco said.
Rusty Richardson, the owner of Bernard’s Store For Men, a 75-year-old local clothing store, said he never considered backing out as an advertiser.
“Small town means something,” Richardson, 66, said. “We know each other; we care about each other. And that’s what matters in life, is caring about each other and loving your neighbor as yourself.”
Elmore said he was determined not to let the station die this way. Still, he finds himself thinking about how the culprit managed the heist.
Whoever did it might have noticed that the tower was in a perfect spot for such a crime, authorities said, tucked behind the Mar-jac Poultry Alabama facility, which is undergoing construction and is filled with trucks carrying equipment that could have served as cover.
There is only one way in and out of the fenced-off area, officials said. The culprit likely drove down a muddy back road into the woods to reach it.
On Monday night, Elmore sat in the broadcaster’s booth alongside the Bevill State Community College basketball court, his microphone on, his throat cleared and ready to call the game. His eyes were sore from reading the emails he had received about the crime. But there on WJLX’S website, he could see that more than 100 people had tuned in to the livestream, propping up his station for a little longer.
“Thank you so very much for listening,” he said.