Commercial small town AM station owner with a license to re-broadcast on FM as part of an FCC program to help AM stations survive (by giving them exposure on the FM dial, but they must keep broadcasting on AM)...took down his AM tower years ago according to satellite/streetview, changed the logo on the site to de-emphasize the AM band and instead carry the FM band, then for some reason drew a lot of attention to himself claiming the tower was stolen. It looks like it was possibly either as part of a plan to exploit people, or suddenly someone noticed and started asking questions.

He then put up a gofundme.

He apparently had no monitoring of any kind. Nobody in town knows nothin' (nobody noticed the AM broadcast going away, and nobody noticed trucks hauling out tons upon tons of metal etc), scrap dealers (who are clearly the most ethical, honest sort) know nothin', the tower would not have sufficient value to justify such a brazen theft as it's not copper. Broadcast techs/operators who kinda all know each other, also know nothing and are calling the situation questionable to outright bullshit depending on how polite they are.

Geerling and his dad are erring very much on the polite-but-this-doesn't-add-up side which is responsible. I their video they also share photos of them doing a planned takedown of a tower that took weeks/months and still went a bit 'sideways' and left a clear channel of damaged trees where it fell.

The situation is muddied by some young/dumb youtuber going to the wrong site where there is another abandoned tower site, as well as the correct site having two transmitters/towers on it until the AM station's tower was taken down.

I think there's also at least one video a few years old of someone parked at the site with their radio tuned to the AM frequency, getting nothing.

From the comments on one of the videos:

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@ianlawrence4993
22 minutes ago
Thank you for the video. It really is crazy how most large news organizations are failing to ask basic questions about this story and keep falling for Elmore’s dog and pony show.

From Google Street View images, it appears that the tower has been dismantled (or at least mostly dismantled) for around a year or so. All of these photos were taken from basically the same location (accounting for digital zoom).

January 2022 https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8067222,-87.2682012,3a,15y,3...

October 2022
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.806721,-87.2681688,3a,15y,34...

Both WJLX’s tower (dark colored) and the neighboring tower for WIXI (red and white striped) are visible.

March 2023 https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8067219,-87.2682037,3a,15y,3...

January 2024
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8067226,-87.2681813,3a,15y,3...

The WIXI tower is visible but there is no sign of the darker WJLX tower.

Sometime between October 2022 and March 2023 it appears the WJLX tower was dismantled to the point that it cannot be seen on Street View.

Shout out to the folks over on the Radio Discussions forums for pointing this out first (at least to my knowledge). https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/wjlx-wjbe-and-werh-...

Also, from the Internet Archive it appears WJLX changed the masthead logo on their website in the middle of 2022. The old “Jasper’s Oldies” logo advertised both the 1240 AM channel and the 101.5 FM channel. The new “Voice of Walker County” logo only advertises the 101.5 FM channel.

Old Homepage April 1, 2022
https://web.archive.org/web/20220401022504/https://www.wjlx1...

New Homepage May 16, 2022

https://web.archive.org/web/20220516051909/https://www.wjlx1...

However, the thumbnail image for the GoFundMe set up by the station for a new tower is the old “Jasper’s Oldies” logo which includes the 1240 AM channel.
GoFundMe page
https://www.gofundme.com/f/wjlx-1240-am-tower-and-equipment-...

They have brought back the old logo to make it appear that they are an AM station when their marketing has ignored that for almost 2 years now. It seems to me that they stopped broadcasting in AM no later than 2022, and given their previous proceedings with the FCC probably much earlier than that. It is telling that in the interviews with local residents for this story, there is no clarification on whether or not they had listened to the AM channel specifically any time recently.