KANSAS CITY, MO. — The owner of a Class D AM radio station serving the Southwest Corner of Missouri and towns near Joplin is coming to terms with the collapse of its 75-year-old radio tower, and what to do next.
A broadcast tower housing the transmitter for KRMO-AM 990 in Cassville, Mo., an “Ag Source Radio” station under the Talon Media banner, came tumbling down at roughly 8am Central on October 24.
According to the Lawrence County Record newspaper, Dewayne Gandy, one of the owners of Talon Media parent Eagle Broadcasting, was mowing around the tower adjacent to a cemetery as he watched the structure erected in October 1949 fall to the ground.
What happened? A guy wire supporting the tower snapped, flipping over adjacent power lines, the newspaper reports. This caused the tower to sway, and then fall to the northwest — barely missing the tower shack housing the station transmitter.
Gandy had no immediate answer as to why the KRMO tower collapsed.
The local power company shut off power immediately, preventing dry prairie grass from a lingering regional drought from catching fire.
Gandy noted that the tower was painted and received new obstruction lighting in 2023.
While KRMO is available via streaming audio, plans were immediately made for the station to resume broadcasting as of Thursday evening via the tower for KSWM-AM 940 in Aurora, Mo., to the northeast of Monett, Mo., and the home of KRMO’s now-retired structure, which has completed 75 years of service.
While under much different circumstances, Sunday evening saw the collapse of a radio tower in Houston’s Bayou Bend area east of downtown in the Second Ward, crippling broadcasts for multiple TelevisaUnivision properties.
On October 11, a hot air balloon inadvertently stuck the broadcast tower for Cumulus Media’s KKOB-AM 770 in Albuquerque, forcing it off the air on the kHz band. KKOB can also be heard on the FM dial, and those broadcasts were not impacted by the incident.
— With reporting by Adam R Jacobson
