Tower theft puts station off the air
Even after decades of working in radio, the call Brett Elmore received last week was more shocking than any he had fielded on the air.
His landscaper had noticed a problem at one of his station’s properties - a 60m-tall one, to be exact. “The tower is gone,” he recalled the landscaper saying.
Elmore, the general manager of WJLX in Jasper, Alabama, was certain he had misheard. The structure in question was a steel radio tower the station had used to broadcast programmes for decades.
“It’s not like it sprouted legs,” he said. Only an empty concrete slab and cut wire remained where the tower once stood. Since then, the radio station has been off the air.
Elmore reported the tower’s disappearance to police, detailing what the landscaper had seen, and showing investigators photos of the site.
“They were as bumfuzzled as I was,” he said. “I’m still in shock.”
The Jasper Police Department, which is investigating the matter, said the exact time and date of the theft were unclear.
WJLX, branded the “Sound of Walker County”, had served thousands of listeners in Alabama since the mid-1950s, Elmore said. The AM station plays a daily 8am church programme, midday talk shows from local broadcasters, and live high school sports coverage.
That was until last Friday, when the landscaper arrived at a WJLX property for cleanup work, only to find that the tower that had once jutted far above the greenery surrounding the site was nowhere to be found.
The padlock was also missing from the small equipment building near the tower, and the door was left open, Elmore said. Walking inside, the landscaper also found that the station’s AM transmitter, which sends the signal through the tower, was gone.
“They had wiped out everything,” he said.
The station can still broadcast using its FM frequency, which has equipment at a different property in Jasper. WJLX’s 101.5 FM is a classic hits station. But the US Federal Communications Commission denied Elmore’s request to do so, citing a rule prohibiting FM translators from operating when the AM primary station is off air.
In the week since the tower and transmitter disappeared, WJLX listeners have missed out on their regular programming. Elmore and his colleagues have resorted to streaming programmes online.
Elmore is awaiting updates from authorities about what might have happened to the tower. But he suspects it won’t be recovered in one piece.
“If the tower is found, it’s probably in a million pieces,” he said. “If I had to imagine, it’s probably been cut up. That’s probably the only way they can transport it.”