Ohio Valley 100,000-Watt FM Station Silenced by a Copper Thief

A country radio station in the Ohio Valley is broadcasting at a fraction of its licensed power after a copper thief severed the transmission line to its antenna tower in broad daylight.

A lunchtime call, and a tower line gone

Evan Adkins, director of engineering at Kindred Communications, called company president Mike Kirtner shortly before lunch last Thursday. "Are you sitting down?" he asked. Kirtner, 75, has spent decades as a broadcast owner in the tri-state area where Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio meet along the Ohio River, and one of his AM stations had already lost copper radials to a thief.

According to WSAZ(TV) reporting cited by Radio World, the alleged perpetrator is Paul Crisp of Catlettsburg, Kentucky. He is accused of severing the main transmission line that feeds 93.7 WDGG(FM), a country station licensed to Ashland, Kentucky and known locally as "The Dawg." The cable crosses a bridge from the transmitter building and climbs the tower on Musser Lane in Catlettsburg. All of it was cut.

Kirtner said the suspect dragged the heavy line a few hundred yards over a hill to his house and had already sliced it into sections, apparently to recover the copper. He suspects the theft was scouted in advance, including by disabling the site's video surveillance. "It was definitely well-thought out," Kirtner said. "He was lucky in that he didn't die, he was unlucky that he got caught." The Boyd County Sheriff's Office found the cut-up line in the suspect's yard and arrested him after a short pursuit.

Ten watts instead of 100,000

WDGG's Class C1 signal went off the air. The station now runs at roughly 10 watts on a backup transmitter and an auxiliary antenna, and it is unclear whether the main antenna was damaged.

Repair is complicated by the unusual size of the line. Because such lines carry pressurized gas, splicing the cut pieces back together risks leaks, so Kirtner is looking for an alternative route. He puts total repair costs between $70,000 and $100,000, with cable running as much as $160 per foot. Adkins is coordinating the recovery with the station's insurer; Kirtner hoped to have a direct transmission path in place by Friday, June 5, though full power will take longer.

A local station, and a local response

WDGG is one of seven stations in Kirtner's group, and he said the reaction around Huntington, Ashland and the surrounding region has been striking. "Because we're locally owned, listeners see this as a community business that's been attacked," he said. The group's events — the weekly "9th Street Live" street party in Huntington and the July 3 "Dawg Dazzle" fireworks show — draw about 15,000 people a year.

What station owners can take from it

Kirtner is not sure the incident could have been prevented, and he warns other FM operators that a copper theft can silence a station anywhere, at any time. "Criminal intent is hard to avoid," he said. In hindsight he would have liked spare transmission line on hand, though the cable's unusual dimensions make that hard, but, he said, "it doesn't hurt to have on hand."