Alabama radio station's AM tower stolen!

[thewayne]

The station HAD a two-hundred foot tower! Had is the operative word as it has been stolen! And now the station is completely off the air. The station has an FM side, but apparently it is a repeat of the AM side and the FCC says it cannot broadcast if the AM side is down, so the station is completely off the air.

The tower itself dates back to the 1950s and is worth over $200,000. There's additional equipment installed on it in service of the broadcasting worth another $60,000. And these towers aren't exactly stocked and ready to be delivered. This seriously cripples the station, and if there's an area emergency like a tornado or wild fire, the people in its broadcast footprint won't be able to tune in for information!

And since they are licensed for broadcast by the Federal Communications Commission, interfering with their broadcast, perhaps by doing something like stealing their tower is a Federal crime and will earn you up to ten years in the Fed pen!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/200-foot-am-radio-tower-disappears-halting-alabama-station-broadcast/

Comments

[thewayne]

The same way you eat an elephant, one bite at a time?  ROFL!  I don't know.  According to the Wikipedia page for the station that was posted as a reply, they've had a lot of outages due to deferred maintenance, I'm guessing it wasn't unusual for the station to go off the air.  If they had this history, I'm guessing the thieves just decided to make their own outages.  They had to have someone savvy about broadcast radio because the output of those transmitters can be lethal!

[disneydream06]

Inside job? :o :o :o

[bibliofile]

Or maybe someone got the idea from the guy who stole that statue of Jackie Robinson to sell for scrap? Though considering how he got caught while trying to melt it down, I'm interested to know how the thieves plan to disguise all the metal in a tower that huge.

[disneydream06]

Sad to say there are probably too many people that just don't care. :o

[thewayne]

That's just appalling.  I worked for a police department, and we had a metal theft unit.  It worked like the pawn shop detail: any transaction over $25 required a slip to be filled out and sent to the unit, which then checked against any thefts from utility yards, like manhole covers or spools of wire and such.  But to steal the statue of a legend for scrap?  That's just sad.  I really hope they catch these guys and throw the book at 'em.  I'm glad the original mold is still in good shape.

[thewayne]

Possibility, but I doubt it.  You never know.  It'll depend on them finding the remains of the antenna or some other link to the perpetrators.

[disneydream06]

If you hear, keep us posted. :)