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WVOL Attacked Again!

What is not clear: did they cut the transmission lines (leaving the actual tower in place) or did they cut the guy wires leaving the tower in a horizontal position?
 
I was told they took all the coils and busted all the capacitors at all 6 towers, just after their consultant had repaired them from the flood damage. Do metal scrap dealers buy coils?
 
... and again!
http://www.wsmv.com/news/27564575/detail.html

On Monday night, vandals threw bricks through the WVOL station van's windows. WVOL host T.J. Graham said the next day, someone called the station and asked if they'd fixed the shattered windows yet. "I've found that people who make threats like that and vandalize property know how far to go, because those are cowards," said Graham.

I reckon they might want to invest in a barb wire fence sometime soon...
 
May be a dumb question but what would it cost to have security cameras on the building and
some lights on that property. Having a studio and tower at the same site makes a story like this very uncomfortable but it's happened twice and nobody saw anything?

Whoever did this must know if and when all board ops are gone or they are signing off at midnight or something. Every gas station and drug store in town has security cameras, and whoever is doing this seems to not be challenged on time. This takes longer than shoplifting a pack of chewing gum somewhere.
they have plans to protect themselves better?
 
I never worked for a station that had a security system. But that has been a few years ago and back then there were tons of businesses that did not have security systems.

When I did radio I don't remember feeling like I was working for a "wrong side of the tracks economy" business. This is just an off-the-cuff observation... not something I have made an academic-quality study about... but it seems second and third tier radio stations are still operating in a 1950s budget and economy while the rest of the world has moved forward. Seldom do you see a mom-and-pop restaurant like we used to visit mid-morning for coffee gathering. Today you go where they have computer terminals all over the place, and furniture that matches. Goober's Corner Gas Station ala Mayberry is basically gone. And church today may have a sound sytem that cost's more than the radio station down the street would sell for!

No, some security cameras (in theory) wouldn't cost much, but there doesn't seem to be room in the budget for them in today's third tier radio stations.
 
The first station that I ever worked for was the almighty WHDM in McKenzie, Tennessee. I always felt like security was lax there. The back door was probably about the quality of your average bedroom door. (In other words, an indoor quality door coming in from the outside.) You could have easily kicked it in if you wanted to. The front door was not much better. It had a window in it, with extremely thin glass. And it had a hasp on it that they put a bolt through (not even a padlock!) at the end of the day. (They once complained to me about not putting that bolt through the hasp before going home one evening, but I told them that I couldn't find the washer that we also needed, in order to prevent the bolt from falling right through the hasp.) One could easily have broken that window and gotten right in. Their only real "security" was keeping the light on in the control room overnight.

That was all the bad parts. The good part is that this station is located downtown, just a block or two from the town square, so it was unlikely that any criminal activity would have gone unseen. It should also be pointed out that the station was not controversial, and that most of its listeners were senior citizens. (They actually had the opposite problem! Not enough people knew about them!) Their tower was a mile or two out of town on a road with a name something like Radio Tower Road, but even then, I never heard of any issues with transmitter damage or vandalism.

Years after I left that station, they increased their security. They put better doors on both the front and back of the station. Probably a good thing, because they are now mostly satellite-fed, and I couldn't even find anyone home during the day!

(The "almighty" bit in the first paragraph was sarcasm. This station was a 500-watt daytime-only operation at the time that I worked there.)
 
If 'VOL would invest in a call screener off the air and utilize call block, 90 percent of the morons that call in would be weeded out. But this would make for a boring show then, wouldn't it?

Graham seems to bring all of this on himself. Sometimes it's amusing, but most of the time it gets old (and rather quickly at that). The 'parodies', as he puts it, are loathsome. Some guy singing over karaoke tracks with different lyrics, while hearing the original lyrics being sung by background singers on the track! He uses these parodies quite judiciously as filler, sometimes allowing the automation to go back into music rotation and cutting the songs off midway to go back on the air (aaaaargh!).

Graham likes to play 'I Believe' by Brooks and Dunn quite a bit, too (not that there is anything wrong with that, guess he likes Brooks And Dunn).

Jae Nash's (host on before T.J.) show is so inconsistent, you may hear her once or twice a week. Show title of 'All Things Considered'. How original! Wonder if NPR hasn't cranked up about that yet? May as well be the 'T.J Graham Pre-Game Show' since he is always on the air with her. .

Heidelberg's afternoon show 'The Show' is rarely heard.

If they'd just stick to music (which is a wonderful mix, by the way. . one reason I enjoy listening to 'VOL), or at least improve the production quality of their talk programming, most of these problems would probably go away.

Of course, I could just spin the dial and listen to 'The Big Mouth' at 880.

onetake said:
May be a dumb question but what would it cost to have security cameras on the building and
some lights on that property. Having a studio and tower at the same site makes a story like this very uncomfortable but it's happened twice and nobody saw anything?

Whoever did this must know if and when all board ops are gone or they are signing off at midnight or something. Every gas station and drug store in town has security cameras, and whoever is doing this seems to not be challenged on time. This takes longer than shoplifting a pack of chewing gum somewhere.
they have plans to protect themselves better?
Click to expand...
 
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