The Federal Communication Commission’s Enforcement Bureau has issued notices of violation related to the antenna towers for two Stratemeyer Media stations in southern Illinois.
Benjamin Stratemeyer’s company is the licensee of 102.1 WIBV(FM), a 10.5 kW Class B1 station licensed to Mount Vernon, Ill., about 75 miles east of St. Louis, and the currently silent 1 kW 1490 WKRO(AM), licensed to Cairo, which is the southernmost city in the state at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
Stratemeyer Media also owns three other stations in Kentucky and Missouri.
White lights
Sun Industries Inc. is the owner of the WIBV antenna located in Grand Prairie, Ill., and Samuel Stratemeyer is listed as the company’s president, according to the commission’s account.
In January 2025, an agent from the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s Chicago Office inspected the antenna, located on East Brink Rd. in Grand Prairie, and observed that it was not equipped with the required white obstruction lighting.
Stratemeyer acknowledged to agents in September 2023 that the lighting was not in compliance. The violation continued through last June, when he advised an agent that he was still attempting to hire a contractor to make repairs.
The commission specifically cited the 21-month period during which the lighting was not maintained in accordance with requirements and his failure to take immediate action to ensure compliance.
In June, Benjamin Stratemeyer also admitted to an agent that the structure’s ownership had changed several years prior, meaning the information on file with the commission was out of date.
The FCC’s rules require that the owner of an antenna structure notify the commission within five days of any change in ownership.
Unregistered
WKRO’s antenna is owned by Stratemeyer along with Sun Industries.
This past February, an agent from the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s Columbia Office observed that the lighting was extinguished well after local sunset time. WKRO’s license indicates that the structure requires painting and obstruction lighting during the nighttime, including a top-level beacon and two steady-burning side markers mounted at specific heights, according to the commission.
The next morning, the agent observed that the paint on the structures was “severely faded, flaking and exposing bare metal, and did not meet the standards of the FAA’s In-Service Aviation Orange Tolerance Chart.”
According to the FCC’s account, Stratemeyer admitted later that month that he was aware of the poor condition of the antenna tower’s paint and he admitted the tower never had any lighting.
Because the antenna falls within the FAA’s 100-to-1 slope criteria with respect to the nearby Cairo Regional Airport, it qualifies as an obstruction requiring a notice of proposed construction to the FAA.
Consequently, the owners were required to register the antenna structure with the commission, but the FCC stated that Stratemeyer and Sun Industries failed to do so.
WKRO filed for a silent special temporary authority in February for technical problems with its tower due to a winter storm. Separate to this case, in April, the commission sent WKRO a letter of inquiry in regarding the STA request, inquiring if the station may have been silent or operating with unauthorized facilities for more than a year.
Both Stratemeyer and Sun Industries have 20 days to file a written response to the FCC for the violations. They must explain why the violations occurred, detail the steps they have taken to fix the issues and prevent them from happening again and provide a timeline for any remaining repairs.
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