The station with the missing tower 

I'm an expert on abandon structures and no one has been home here for years. It's a go fund me scam and shame on WJLX ,he needs to do some jail time.

The district attorney could subpoena the electric company and find out when the meter was pulled.

Thanks for speaking in a more educated manner on this. I don't know anything about radio, as evident by my the mistakes in my video lol, but I wanted to be a starting point for others to talk about this more in depth and you've done just that!

The whole thing screams shady, shady, shady.

A station that should have pulled the plug on their operation years ago, but when they got the FM Translator they switched to Low Power FM mode and shut down the AM in violation of FCC Rules.

"It was discovered by a landscaping crew." Um... no air monitors? No off-air alarms? BULL. They took it down themselves. Every station I've worked at had silence sensors and carrier detectors. IIRC 10 seconds of silence set off alarms in-studio, 30 seconds and engineers were paged.

As a radio engineer in the UK I can think of just a few cases of towers of towers being felled by vandalism. However on hearing about this incident I did have a snoop around the internet. The AM transmitter has a long history and was allegedly intermittent in 2016/17. I did have a brief search to see if a Gates transmitter had appeared for sale at about that time... Most people with a passion for radio would not weigh in a small transmitter for scrap metal value, I suspect it was sold. Certainly the site visit video indicated that the tower had been gone a while. I suspect the popular belief is correct, that the AM only existed on paper to justify the FM operation.

Reeks of the radio station pulling down the AM transmitter and tower to save money as the AM transmitter was a cost center, while keeping the revenue center, the FM transmitter, on the air. Substantially reduced the operating cost.

I was an engineer for the US Navy and part of my duties was the oversight of contractors operating and maintaining facilities like this. I did this for over 20 years. There is no way this story is true as told.

It is beyond obvious that the transmitter site has not been in use for almost a decade.

How to say your station has no listeners without saying your station has no listeners

Missing towers? I'm missing a set of keys for the mountain...

Definitely has been abandoned for quite some time.

Great presentation, avoided wild conspiracy theories, and kind of presented the facts, and allowed us to draw our own conclusions.

observations from other videos: Electrical service is missing from the pole (50 feet away) all the way to the meter. Building had had the copper wiring stripped, and that wasn't recently by the looks of things. Brush around the building has had time to grow, and that is WAY more than a few days worth. Door hanging from the hinges is wind damage, and if you look close the padlock is still clicked shut. IOW, no sign of forced entry. (someone had a key) The other part of the lock hasp is still on the door. Brush in front of the door is 2 feet high and basically not disturbed, so removal of gear didn't happen a few days ago. The video of the guy trying to listen in his car is from 2012, so at least intermittently off the air for over a decade. Dirt on the floor of the building has no recent foot traffic. Driveway to that site has no signs of recent traffic from removing the tower. No obvious signs of where the tower fell so that means the weeds have had time to grow in the field as well.

Geerling Engineering stole it. They made the first non legacy media video on it hahahahahah

Bravo. Excellent report. It would be awesome if there were a few full MW spectrum scans from nearby SDR's available for analysis.

In the summer of 1979, I worked for a broadcast radio engineer for an FM station. During that time, some idiot went out to the transmitter site and shot holes through the transmitter building and the heliax. Missed the transmitter and the heliax was functional until one morning when the heavy dew settled inside the heliax. The transmitter was off during midnight until around 6 so there weren't issues until the transmitter was lit. Instantly, the station studio's received feedback there were problems and the broadcaster called the radio engineer. That was 1979. We didn't need landscapers telling us that there were issues. Even though no one was on site, we knew there were problems right away. That was 45 years ago. What is it now that they don't have the technology we had 45 years ago? How did the station engineer not know? I don't understand that one bit? They have to know. No one addresses this. You don't need a landscaper to tell you.

Hey im the guy that helped with filming williams video, seriously wow thank you for providing more evidence. Its cool to see how the story has taken off and who cares about it. amazing video dude thanks.

Seeing the site, it is overgrown over the guide wires at least a year more likely 3 years or more. The building is completely empty But the absolute most damning thing is there hasn't been electric service to this site in years and the meter has been gone for years and the service wires were cut years ago and you can see the rust and corrosion where it was cut probably 5 or 6 years ago The FBI is going to pull the records from the power company and find out the last time there was an electric bill out there and what day they pulled that meter and this guy is going to go to jail. Now if they had actually taken the tower down this year there would be imprints and tire tracks in the ground and there are none I would bet they shut down this Tower and took out the am transmitter and any other equipment and the site has set empty for years and I still don't know how the tower would have been recently stolen because it would have left marks and there aren't any So if somebody actually stole the tower it was years ago this scam is being run by a bunch of AM stations that promote themselves as FM stations and there's been 10 of these at least in the news in the past 3 months These AM stations don't want to deal with the hassle of running an AM station they want the FM translator and they can't have the FM without the AM

THE TOWER! THE TOWER! Rapunzel! Rapunzel! We are going to the tower !!!

Yep! nailed it! I respect how you tackled this subject sir! much respect! I'm definitely curious about what is really going on with that station, I'll definitely admit that it looks really shady as far as what happened

GREAT Job Collier

I’m so glad you covered this. When I saw this on the news, I was like. Wait this makes absolutely no sense at all.

I was a radio jocky in the late 70's early 80's and trust me you know when you arent transmitting..... people CALL !!

I was one of the duped fools who contributed to their GoFundMe 😲😲 I guess we can assume that "thieves" aren't smart enough to realize the neither the tower nor the guy wires are copper. Local prices for scrap steel are around 10 cents per pound but for copper, $ 3 per pound

Interesting, yes, over 11 years since that site was on the air. I really can't wait for the FBI to go to the power company and get the meter number from the site and the ACTUAL bills for that meter and history of the meter install and removal.

The local meth heads would know how long the site has been vacant

I've DXed some AM stations that no longer list their AM freq to the point you think you are listening to an FM station

This whole story is crazy. I truly wonder what the FCC will do.

LOL. First off, what is a lanscaping crew doing in the winter?

I mentioned this in another video but seeing the box fan being used for ventilation shows the budget to keep the AM site on air was virtually zero. There is no way that site was transmitting a few short weeks ago. A second generation GM should have been aware of the moment that it stopped transmitting, not relying on a landscaping company as a station monitor. I'm thinking the tower fell down due to lack of maintenance a significant amount of time ago (and this is what damaged the fence around the tower). The AM frequency featuring anywhere on the most recent station logo smells off as well. If you are paying money to keep your AM transmitter on air, you sure as heck tell people about it! The truth will come out I'm sure.

I was waiting for your take on this Marcos. My local FM rock station was talking about this and they relayed that their engineer couldn't believe it for a second. CHTZ-FM has a notorious issue where if there is a song that is faded to the left for a few seconds, it triggers the silence alarm and thus the backup playlist, dubbed the Nirvana ghost, where "About a girl- Unplugged" begins to play- since its at the top of their playlist alphabetically. He fixed the stupid problem since he was sick of getting constant (3/4 times daily) notifications about it. Question for you, Marcos. Could a court/FCC/ governing bodies or authorities subpoena any system records or notifications that could potentiality alarm a station/engineer of any "off-air" or malfunction alerts? I wonder if that could potentially be a nail in the coffin if they had ample time and knowledge of the station being off air while not authorized to be.

0:47 I've heard of having the perfect face for radio, but this is the first time I've seen it.

the Collier site visit never showed how the power got underground from a pole? i wonder if the pole was sniped also.

There's an unexpected lesson here: a lot of people jumped on the first report thinking "Thieves! They'll steal anything! Here's how to find them: blah blah blah." Me among them. Now it appears to be a smokescreen authored by the owner.

I think the antenna fell to the ground due to disrepair, probably over a year ago. They scrapped everything on site, stopped the AM broadcast and kept broadcasting to 101.5FM. The FCC found the AM signal was down and they made up this entire story to cover themselves. When looking at the area from google streetview, we can se that the tower was already gone in march 2023. Very suspicious.

I want to see the maintenance bills for upkeeping the AM station, if it was up and running over the last 12 years, they would have had to have purchased parts and equipment at some point.

this sounds like something id hear about on an unsolved mysteries youtube channel

If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck...

Someone needs to get what the police know. Maybe get a copy of the police report. It is illegal to make a false police report.

I watched the walk-through video that you showed clips of and because I have done some tree falling and recovery work in the past I didn't see any signs of a tall mast falling to the ground nor did I see any sign of truck tracks that would have been needed to haul the tower off of the sight. What I saw makes the Stations story rather suspect at best. You didn't see any transformer on the power pole that should have been there...

As of March 11, they have raised 21,838.

Isn't the idea of a translator, that it inputs the signal from one frequency (the AM), translates it to a new frequency (FM). so if the AM should go down there would be no input to the translator, so it would also go silent. So how was there audio on the FM if there was no AM?

Great reporting, you got a new subscriber.

After watching your video and the kids' video of the site I think there's a lot more to this story than has been told and here are a few thoughts: 1. Are we sure Fred and Shaggy are at the right location? In your video you show the Google street view shots showing two towers near one another, but I don't see the other standing tower in footage. 2. Is the remaining tower this channel's FM tower? If yes, then is there any way the AM transmitter could have been (a long time ago) relocated to the buildings housing the FM transmitter, and could you transmit 1KW AM on the FM antenna another location with a much smaller antenna to maintain the appearance that they were still transmitting AM as per their licensing requirement? 3. The station has had financial troubles, as an earlier $1,500 fine for a late filing was waived because of financial hardship. Thus, it would not surprise me that the tower was uninsured. (Which brings up the question--does FCC or anyone require towers to be insured?) 4. It sounds to me that they were probably in violation of the law requiring them to broadcast in AM as a condition for rebroadcasting in FM (Which sounds like kind of a dumb law anyway, but it is what it is.) 5. Who tipped the media off to this story?

Lol this would be near my hometown in Etowah County.

The missing electric meter is a bit odd. . .

I could be wrong and at times the wild card pops up. But to me it seems the lot or Aera needs to have the grass cut around the building for access

Rather convenient that he just happened to have the power bills handy. It would be easy for the police to request the meter records from the power company to get the exact date they pulled the meter. That doesn't necessarily mean they stopped billing the account on that date.

What kind of federal and local charges could he face along with the penalties?

Where is pirate radio station AM 1710 broadcasting from? I hear it over KiWiSDR in Birminham AL

I'm thinking that because they now meet the FCC requirement for a licensed station, using the nearby iHeart HD-3 frequency, they wouldn't ever have to rebuild the AM transmitter site. They would just keep the GoFundMe revenue and smile.

The sign out front of the WJLX studio also says WJBE. WJBE is a daytime only station, that has an fm translator broadcasting 24/7. So it is possibly allowed to run a translator with the AM station off air, but is it legal? I can’t find any connection between the two stations, so it is unclear why the studio sign says WJBE.

I want to build a radio tower in the future but then how do I stop Thieves from stealing it

Pull the utility bill for the site. Likely no service for a LONG TIME.

Did the local police/sheriff even go out to the site?

From the moment I heard about this, it seemed shady to me. This is not theft, its fraud.

At the very least, the person representing himself as the owner and general manager has a different name than the name on the license. This looks more like a broadcasting marketing stunt however he may have crossed the line into actual fraud.

It is possibly a go fund me scam. He was offered a tower and transmitter and declined the offer. Let us recap. The AM has been off a while. He reported it off but never repaired the transmitter and never told the fcc. He has another non commercial station that has the antenna located in the wrong place for some reason. Some say he tried to sell adds on it. I tuned into the AM station myself and never picked anything up last year on two occasions. The AM tower site had a tower according to google earth in early 2022. The power meter base looks like it was empty for a year or two. Around Jasper the people are split between poor old Mr Elmore and the whole thing stinks. We will see. Another thing that has come up is the tower beacon light. It’s supposed to be 200 feet so it must have a beacon light. The FAA doesn’t know a thing about if and there may or may not be records of light bulb replacement. He has many agencies asking questions. As of last week the station was on the internet only. The FCC turned down his request for running the translator without the main station. He went on for 20 minutes his last afternoon on the air making it sound like the mean old feds told him to shut it down.

It doesn’t matter is it was not in use or not maintained. Stolen is stolen and even if the owner is off on his maintenance it doesn’t change the fact his property was stolen.

This was an obvious fraud. Blatantly obvious. Thats at least 3 counts of fraud, fcc violations, etc.

So iHeart got into the act now?

I don't get this. Are there no AM listeners or AM enthusiast who can say that it's been off the air since some specific date? I can't imagine a small station in the UK claiming such bollocks! Plenty of listeners and DXers will know when it stopped broadcasting. And it's obvious the site hasn't had any tx kit on it for years. Did he think no one would go to check the site? What's the guy playing at? If it's some financial scam it's pretty easy to expose!

Shame about the censer ship flag 🤤 the meter look a old 60 amp cable type witch is very old the rust and decay it most likely it fell on it's own after a strong wind the dog house looks it has been abandoned for many year's. the transmeter amp probably burned out a long time ago / scrapers probably found it in a abandoned state not that it makes right to take any of it. To stay operational it was all going to have to be all replaced unfortunately AM dosent have much of a market ? it probably was going cost over 200 k to bring it back.

The utility meter was removed years ago, like 9 years ago, way before the tower was stolen. The tower was stolen in the last 3 or 4 years, but the station has been off the air over 8 years. The utility company will tell the FBI the number of the meter and when the station stopped using power and when they removed the meter. There is no equipment, no STL dish, nothing, and the scrappers would have stolen the tower but where is the dish ? They removed the AM transmitter many years ago. This station owner was insane to think he could pull this off with the FBI. He is going to go to prison for lying to the FBI.

This is a pretty closed community. No doubts, somebody knows something about this. Prank or not this is theft. 🎉

Check for permits. Someone would needed to pull a permit to tear down the tower.

Well, people see what they want to see. I saw that young man's video too, and didn't see anything conclusive. He had made up his mind, but if it was copper thieves, I'd think that they'd have taken the copper wire too. And the old guy wire could have been left over from previous work. I've been to a few AM transmitters, and a lot do look abandoned, because people dump on the property, and the station can't afford to keep paying to haul the junk away. I've seen plenty of old buildings with the original meter housing rusting away, and a brand new 400A service drop on another wall. The kid didn't show much, and I can't help but wonder why. I'm not voting to crucify anyone without all the evidence.

I can show you many transmitter sites where it looks just as bad as the WJLX site, as far as landscaping goes. Just because the trash and weeds and even small tree growth is there does not make the site an abandoned site. Using proper forensics on the cut cables and metal will be the only way to tell when it was cut, and just because it is corroded does not make it years old. As far as pictures by google and such, if it does not have evidence tags on them, they can not be used in a court of law. And AM stations go down many times day and night due to maintenance and thunderstorms, so the lack of signal does not make for evidence of a missing transmitter. Jumping to wild conclusions on a video that overlooks the antenna base, and the other structures on the property just makes for sloppy investigation and should be ignored until the official report comes out