With the help of iHeartMedia, WJLX — the station whose AM tower disappeared, taking its FM translator service with it — is back on the radio waves in Jasper, Ala.
General Manager Brett Elmore says “The Sound of Walker County” can now be heard on a HD3 channel of iHeart station WDXB in Birmingham and that he subsequently received the FCC’s OK to pick up that signal to feed the WJLX translator on 101.5 in Jasper.
“iHeart reached out to learn more about the story and offered to help WJLX get back on-air and serving the Jasper, (Ala.) community as soon as possible. They set us up on their iHeartRadio app and lent us one of their HD3 signals to get us back to our loyal Jasper audience,” Elmore wrote in a post on the station’s Facebook page on Friday.
Jasper is approximately 40 miles northwest of Birmingham.
“Safe to say this has been a whirlwind experience, but I am deeply grateful to iHeartMedia, Jon Zellner, Jeff Littlejohn and everyone on the team who helped a fellow radio friend get back on air,” Elmore wrote in the post. “I never imagined I would receive a call from the largest media company to help us in Jasper. I am forever grateful.”
Zellner is president of programming operations and digital music at iHeartMedia. Littlejohn is executive vice president of engineering and systems integration.
Zellner wrote on LinkedIn: “Radio has always been about bringing communities together. So happy we were able to help a fellow broadcaster get his station back on the air. Brett couldn’t have been more gracious and WJLX has been in his family for two generations, a fixture in Jasper, Ala.”
An iHeartMedia representative confirmed the arrangement and told Radio World in an email: “Our goal was to support and connect the people of the Jasper community, which is what radio does best.”
Elmore had reported the theft of the WJLX AM tower and transmitter earlier this month, saying the AM had been knocked off the air. With the AM disabled, the broadcaster had to take its FM translator silent per FCC rules even though it operates from a different site.
Meanwhile, online debate continues over whether Elmore faked the tower theft or misstated its timeline. A YouTuber posted a video showing a site that looked abandoned, as we reported earlier. Since then, sleuths on a broadcast message board have posted what they say are photos from Google Street View that show the WJLX tower visible in October 2022, but then not so by March 2023. Radio World has not been able to authenticate the photos.
Elmore has denied that he was in any way involved in the tower’s disappearance. And he thanked the staff at the FCC for its assistance getting the station back on the air. He concluded his Facebook post with this: “I said we would be back and better than ever and we are. Now, we turn our attention on rebuilding our AM.”
The GoFundMe page to raise funds to rebuild the WJLX tower and buy a new transmitter has grown to around $20,000.
Radio World’s repeated calls to the Jasper Police Department for comment have not been returned.
