Knoxville Radio: Towers For Silent Stations Dropped

Armed with bolt cutters, two men gazed up at their looming conquest: a 260-foot-tall former AM radio station tower in a grassy field off East Emory Road.

“We’re going to cut the guy wires and it will fall in the opposite direction of where I’m at,” said 71-year-old Grant Balwanz, president of Georgia-based B&B Towers. His best friend of 20 years, Jerry Finchum, stood by his side.

According to KnoxNews.com, the pair began clipping away at the securing wires and within seconds sent the steel tower buckling to the ground, a series of booming crashes and clouds of dust interrupting the surrounding stillness.

“Ta-da! Wanna do that again, Jerry?” Balwanz said with a grin.

Balwanz has worked in the high-tower industry for 56 years, manufacturing and erecting an estimated 1,350 towers and dismantling another 100 or so. He and Finchum traveled to Knoxville on Wednesday to take down six AM radio towers standing on land now owned by a developer.

The three towers previously broadcast WKVL 850 AM, an old-time country music station. Two towers taken down in Oak Ridge broadcast WATO 1290 AM, which originally aired in 1948 and was the first radio station on a U.S. military reservation. The final dismantled tower in Farragut transmitted a True Oldies Channel, WMTY 670 AM.

All three stations are now silent.