Back in 1992 I worked for a small 2,500 watt AM radio station hid near Bremen, Georgia. We played Southern Gospel music and brokered preacher shows from daylight to dark. Our studio location was situated on the same property as our tower facility on about two acres of pasture land. In fact, we had fenced in a cow or two grazing out back near the antenna. I even had one or two bovine interactions when no humans we available to chat. Cows are not very social. I often wondered the purpose of these animals on our land and have learned recently that often these little stations, similar to mine, posted grazing animals in order to keep the grass mowed thanks to a special agreement with local farmers. The following is a story I discovered while reading a radio forum posted by an owner of such a station. I don’t know the source, but the scenario seems plausible. One word of caution to animal lovers: the story is a bit graphic.
“In the late 80's I owned WDGR Dahlonega, GA. The station's studios, transmitter and tower were all located together, with the tower being in the middle of the 5 acre property. The station was (where else?) - Radio Road, and the land behind the station was fenced. Trying to keep the field bush hogged was a job, and after dodging snakes for a summer I decided on a solution that would pay me. A local farmer needed some grazing land for some cows, and we struck a deal where I'd keep his cows inside the fence where they could effectively keep my tower field mowed. After getting paid for keeping the cows fenced and fed for 7 months, I was quite pleased.
One afternoon I heard a loud pop from inside the station and we immediately went off the air. I headed out the back door where I saw a small fire in the middle of the field. As I went down the steps with an extinguisher I noticed the rail was dotted with red paint, something else to fix. I noticed all the cows were bunched tightly together way down at the bottom of the field, and at the same time I saw to my horror, a cow leg and hind quarter lying next to my car. Further down inside the fence I saw another. A fire, cow parts - I couldn't put all this together, and as I looked at the back door I saw that the entire back of the station was dotted NOT with red paint, but blood. An extremely unlucky cow had bitten into the transmission line buried close to the transmitter building and 10,000 watts had literally blown it up. It was a pretty horrible sight, and also pretty hard to explain to everyone calling wanting to know when we'd return to the air. ‘We'll be back on the air soon - a cow blew up and took us off the air.’
I went back to bush hogging the field - the money I'd made from fencing the cows went to repairing the transmission line. Wild days, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. I'm sure the cow would though.”
Jay Andrews
VP & General Manager
Jacobs Media Corporation
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