200-foot AM radio tower disappears, halting Alabama station broadcast
arstechnica.com
"There's wires everywhere, and it's gone."

200-foot AM radio tower disappears, halting Alabama station broadcast | “There’s wires everywhere, and it’s gone.”::“There’s wires everywhere, and it’s gone.”

  • Monkey With A ShellEnglish
    41•9 months ago

    First it was copper wiring and plumbing, now people taking the radio towers. You ever stop to think maybe if someone had a bit more hope for having enough to live on stupid shit like this would stop?

    • @[email protected]English
      13•9 months ago

      Steve Lehto speculated they might have done it just to get the program off the air when he covered this story. He also mentioned the equipment would sell for practically nothing, so it was probably motivated more by the financial damages the station would incur than what they’d be able to sell the equipment for.

      I’m inclined to believe him as someone who worked in 6 radio stations across his lifetime

      • Monkey With A ShellEnglish
        1•9 months ago

        Something like that’s possible, but since taking an antenna after the fact won’t undo the broadcast, and still leaves the option of internet transmission it seems like a lot of risk for little reward. That’s why the first thing that came to mind for me was scrap salvage. Plenty of people on both the lawful and unlawful side of things making relatively untraceable income that way.

    • @[email protected]English
      7•9 months ago

      It’s my understanding that this is frequently done by pirate radio operators so they can use the equipment to broadcast their own signals.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•9 months ago

        Maybe, but pirate radio in the US is somewhat limited. It was popular in the UK because of how tightly controlled the airwaves are controlled there for the BBC, and you move just outside territorial waters and still broadcast to a good chunk of the country.

        An AM radio tower in the US, though? Can’t discount it completely, but doesn’t seem likely. Every broadcast gives away your location–it’s like lighting a match in a dark cave–and AM transmits pretty far even on small amounts of power. There are ham radio operators who track down things like that just for fun.