200-foot AM radio tower disappears, halting Alabama station broadcast
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
How do you take down and steal a broadcast tower!? And it sounds like they stole the transmitter too? It' s areal shame that the FCC won't let them at least keep the FM signal on the air, most of these old stations on both FM and AM are licensed as an AM primary station with an FM simulcast
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A quick look at their website seems to indicate a fair amount of God bothering. Maybe he decided to stop them spreading hateful lies in his name and just took the tower away. A true miracle!
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I find it interesting that, based on the article, that nobody noticed that the AM tower was gone until a bush hog crew (whatever that is) went to maintain the area around it. Wouldn't the signal going off the air have been an indicator that something was amiss?
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
Those are some ambitious meth heads. They normally just steal catalytic converters and copper wiring.
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I'm not familiar with FCC regulations, but this seems pretty ridiculous. What's the reasoning behind this rule?
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On the one hand, this is awful. On the other hand, at least based on this article, it seems like the first they learned of the missing tower was when the bush hog crew got there, so unless the tower vanished right before they arrived, there was some period of time that the tower wasn't there, and hence not broadcasting, and I guess no one noticed? Which maybe says to me their audience isn't very large/listens online, and maybe this is no great loss, though a federal crime.
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One thought mentioned on other articles on this theft was use of a helicopter. Might be possible but a chopper large enough to lift the tower should have attracted at least one video camera with the resulting post on a media site. And it would still have to put the tower somewhere for later use/cutting. And large choppers are not cheap to rent.
A local case where the tower collapsed was caused by copper thieves whacking at the support cables. In TFA, it seems those cables are still there.
A local case where the tower collapsed was caused by copper thieves whacking at the support cables. In TFA, it seems those cables are still there.
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You don't destroy others' property because you don't like what they're saying.
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MedicinalGoat
Ars Centurion
Everyone assuming meth heads or aliens is exactly what the local feral hog population want us to think.
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That it took people happening to show up on site shows how much the broadcasts were listened to.
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It was the phone cops. They see everything, they know everything, they got their own covert police force!
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Yes, something doesn't add up. How did nobody notice they weren't broadcasting? Or was the signal just extremely weak? This needs to be explained better.
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If I was in the jury deciding on the verdict for the person who did it, I would vote to find them guilty. That doesn't stop me from wishing the guy was never caught and laughing about some asshole losing his God antenna in the interim.
ETA: I'm all about freedom of religion and of speech, but I have seldom (if ever) known of modern AM Godstations that use their platform to preach for societal equity and scientific progress, instead doing everything they can to regress society away from both. So yeah, not mourning the loss, and based on the fact no one bothered to call and report the station was off the air, neither was anyone else lol
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A Bush Hog™ is a type of rotary mower used to clear or maintain underbrush or pasture land.
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The issue is that the AM signal is the original license, while the FM signal is a "translator" and is thus by rule not allowed to originate programming.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-74/subpart-L/section-74.1231
So if the AM is off the air, there's nothing for the FM station to translate.
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Other thing of note, AM antennae are dangerous as fuck and tend to have huge amounts of power running through them. This was not some meth head idiot or they'd be dead from trying. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing and how to do it without getting electrocuted.
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Yeah, this falls under "if a radio station stops broadcasting and no one notices, was it even broadcasting to begin with?"
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That copper couldn't have been worth the effort cutting it down, or even the cost of the tools used.
So that means there was some specific component they needed so they staged the biggest tower heist in history just to get it for some crime kingpin operation.
So that means there was some specific component they needed so they staged the biggest tower heist in history just to get it for some crime kingpin operation.
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If you look at the station's website: https://www.wjlx1015.com/
They don't even advertise that they have an AM signal. I'm willing to bet that nobody, not even the station, listened to the AM, having come to depend entirely on the FM to get the programming out.
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Are you unfamiliar with the Bible, cause it's got a lot of God doing just that.
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When I trained as a DJ in college (lo, these many years), we were told that we were required to monitor (aka, listen to) the on-air signal, not the studio feed. We also took regular measurements off the transmitter, which I understand was automated a long time ago. One way or another, it seems strange that the station didn't notice it was off the air.
[edit to add: @tripinva may have part of the explanation: if they monitored only the FM signal, which would be nicer to listen to, anyway. Automate and forget the transmitter logs and we're done.]
[edit to add: @tripinva may have part of the explanation: if they monitored only the FM signal, which would be nicer to listen to, anyway. Automate and forget the transmitter logs and we're done.]
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I'm not sure that applies as I was suggesting that it was God who removed it. Old testament style
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The crews are typically called Brush Hog crews, who go to sites that need occasional trimming down of the wildlife around them. They employ rotary cutters. A company called Bush Hog makes rotary cutters that brush hog crews employ quite often. So there's an interchangeable nature to the moniker.
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Eh... Maybe no one noticed for a while, truly. They were broadcasting an FM signal as well using different equipment. Who would listen to AM when there is a working FM option? The FM station is only offline because they are not "allowed" to broadcast it while the AM station is down.
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While a real possibility, someone at the transmitter end should have noticed that the load wasn't there. I wonder if the transmitter was on the tower or close to it and there was no monitoring equipment at the station. That's still bad - FCC regs state you're supposed to keep track of all that radiated power.
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Exactly. This is a tech so antiquated that literally not one person reported it gone, yet somehow it's impossible to get rid of it and allocate the spectrum to something that matters.
Sure. If emergency communications are based on the idea of tuning in to AM radio, God help us all. In real life, there's far more effective emergency alert systems in place.
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industry consolidation.
radio stations are no longer required to staff onsite. They have consolidated their operations into towns cities, then transmit by wire out to the station, then broadcasts it on-air.
https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/unattended-operation
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Did someone check the toolbox? Less Nessman will have to update his next news report
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As others have mentioned, it seems odd that this was first noticed by a grounds maintenance crew. Operation of a remote broadcast tower should have involved a relay and significant power. Depending on the age of the electronics, I would expect some record of signal loss and drop in power demand. Isolating the time of this heist should be fairly easy.
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Garry: The tower's gone!
MacReady: Any way we can fix it?
Garry: It's gone, MacReady!
MacReady: Any way we can fix it?
Garry: It's gone, MacReady!
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