This is actually pretty impressive. Highly motivated scrappers.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/alabama-station-disbelief-200-foot-191925880.html

Yeah, wow! Hopefully they get caught, but I'd still be interested to know how they pulled off that feat.
I'd imagine that every scrap yard in the region is on the lookout for anything that looks like it's part of the tower...

A bit funny, my local phone company just had a large tower removed..... by a salvage company.

Im sure it was 200ft or better and they had it down and were gone in like four hours.

When I worked with Caltrans we had 4 40 foot long I beams stolen off the side of the freeway. They way about 3 ton each. They figured it was another contractor with the equipment to pick them up and load them.

Don't ya think they'd have noticed sooner than when they send a crew to do spring cleaning ?!?!? I mean,stations broadcast at least 16 hours a day, most are 24/7. Wouldn't you have a clue the moment you went off the air?

What a brilliant deduction. Someone deserved a promotion !!

Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Sounds like things might not be on the up and up.

Maybe they got a few calls from their listeners telling them the reception was very bad, so they sent the crew out to clean up a few tree branches around the tower thinking that was the problem?

Or it shows how little people care about whatever they were broadcasting on AM.

They do mention they are a smaller station, and don't mention any of their equipment being used.... but generally speaking.... somebody should have noticed the INSTANT the AM side of things wasn't broadcasting. Usually, there are monitors in place to ensure each transmitter is a) operating and b) operating within the guidelines of the FCC. Back in the day, most radio boards had a "Modulation" meter to literally show the modulations of the waves you're outputting. If that sucker be sitting at ZERO.... you're not broadcasting. Used to be both the engineer AND the jockey either had their own modulation meter or both of them could see one.

Some larger stations have the budget to point cameras at the broadcasting equipment so that people could log in remotely and have a look at transmitter status.

These guys are either REALLY small-market, or just this side of incompetent. You'd also think that if anybody listened to the AM broadcast, they'd have been curious why it was shut-off without warning. Hell, if the FCC were on the ball, they'd have been asking "Why is this station supposed to be broadcasting over both bands and yet one band is dead?"

If you're licensed to use a particular frequency, you USE it.

That's bush league,

30 yrs ago I remember 2 crazy cases of aluminum theft.

1st, guys came in and completely cut up and removed all the aluminum bleachers at local high school, BOTH sides of the field
2nd, guys were using chain saws to cut down the aluminium light poles on FL turnpike, they got quite a few, then 1 of them got zapped and went to the great recycler in the sky......

I was thinking the same thing. Apparently even the employees didn't even listen to the stations. Lol

We have a local classic rock station that occasionally goes off the air for hours. I think it's a one man operation.He DJs from 6-12 and I think everything else comes from the broadcasting company he belongs to.

We have a local Classic rock station that randomly goes off the air, Also... Sometimes it goes off for a few minutes. Sometimes a few hours. Sometime for a few days. They come back on the air, and never mention anything about it. Been going on for at least 15 years

i was in south Fla/Homestead area doing emergency generator power on a daily basis following hurricane Andrew. Early on I noticed a large 6x6x60'? alum cross highway road sign truss that had been torn down in the hurricane and had oddly rolled a hundred yards onto a roadside farm. It weighed thousands of pounds. A day or so later one afternoon I noticed a couple of scrappers with chain saws cutting it up. I flagged down a couple of Florida Troopers at the nearby toll plaza. They could not be bothered and blew me off. It was completely gone the next day.
So much for see something, say something.
The OP's linked story seems rather odd, something is off.
1. Steel is not worth that much as scrap, seriously doubt it was alum
2. Dropping a tower is risky, likely not done safely at dark
3, Removing it quickly would take planning and man power
4, That is a lot of cutting to get it into pieces not requiring machinery to move
5. It is easily identified at a scrap yard and while moving

It's not my story.

I have lots of stories like this being in the HVAC supply house business.

The best (worst?) one is someone climbed onto the old Hooters building on a busy street in Wichita. They managed to remove and scrap 4 rooftop units and even cut down and scrapped the metal palm trees in front of the building!

While I agree, I have learned to never underestimate what criminals can and will do for little to no gain.

I knew a guy in high school who stole a hot tub. He didn't have a place to put it or anyone who would buy it. He stole it cause he could. No other reason. He was a complete idiot.

Well, there is that.

I worked at a factory that did brass and aluminum forgings. We got an order to make a large number of brass manhole covers. The covers start out as a brass slug 6" in diameter and about 8" long, and are hammered into the 24" round street manhole covers. Each slug weighs 88lbs. The brass arrives in 6" diameter 30' long sticks of brass and the slugs are cut to length with a saw. After the cut, the slugs are put into steel hoppers about 4' x 4' x 4'. The full hopper weighs just over 2,000lbs each.

We came in one morning (at 5 AM) to find the garage door in the receiving area standing open and 4 tubs of the brass slugs were missing. We called the Police and of course, the 1st move the Police did was notify the local scrap yards about the theft. It didn't take very long to solve the case, about 3 miles from the factory, they found a full sized 1 ton GMC panel van broken down along the side of the road. The thieves loaded all 4 tubs of the brass slugs into the back of the van (with the factory's fork lift) and the rear axle on the van had broken from the 8,000lbs of brass loaded into it. The police caught up with the thieves still walking about a mile farther down the road.

What makes the whole story even more funny is that the guy that was in charge the scrapping detail in the saw department couldn't understand why the thieves would have taken the tubs of brass. In his words " What were they thinking? The most they could have gotten out of that stolen brass was about 1/2 its scrap value, how would they have made any money from that?" I asked him what he thought they might have gotten from the brass at 1/2 the scrap value? His reply was "Only about $4,000." Then I asked him how much he thought they had spent to get the brass? " Maybe $100." he answered. Then I asked him how long it took them to break in, load up the van and leave? "Less then an hour" he responded. Then I asked him how long it took him to make $3,900? (This was in the early 1980s). He had this dumbfounded look on his face, so I went back to what I was working on (I was working in factory maintenance at the time). I think it took him more then an hour to understand that an hour's work and maybe $100 out of pocket expense, to put $3900 into your pocket was pretty good money at the time.

And they say thieves are stupid.

They are, they couldn't make it 4? miles in a vehicle they picked and proceeded to overload to net them $3900 and got caught walking together nearby?