Radio Station Baffled When Their Tower Just… Disappears

An Alabama station is waiting on standby, confused and baffled how they ended up in the situation they're currently in.

WJLX, an AM oldies station in Jasper, Alabama, is currently off the air because their transmitter tower has just disappeared into thin air.

“I have tried all weekend to figure it out, and I just can’t,” General Manager Brett Elmore told the local TV news station.

“I have been in the radio business, around it all my life and then in it professionally for 26 years, and I can say I have never heard of anything like this,” he added. “I can say I’ve seen it all now.”

Elmore learned of the theft on Friday when the landscaping company he had hired to clean up the brush around the transmitter site arrived at the tower's location.

“When he arrived, he called me Friday and said, ‘The tower is gone,’” the station manager explained.

“I said, ‘What do you mean the tower is gone? Are you sure you are at the right place?’ He said, ‘The tower is gone. There is wires everywhere, and it is gone.'”

It would appear that thieves dismantled the tower by cutting the wires that secured it, but also stole all of the equipment from the building attached to the tower.

Elmore said the radio station will rebuild the missing tower, but he wants thieves to know that he will work with investigators to find out who committed the puzzling federal crime.

“This really hurts a small operation like this, but like I said, I believe we will find out who did this,” he said. “It is a federal crime and it absolutely will not be worth it to them."

The Jasper-based radio station used the tower for its AM radio channel, Elmore said.

Elmore said WJLX was able to get temporary authority from the FCC to continue broadcasting its AM channel through other means.

Read more at Action News 5

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