Copper Thief Severs 100kW FM Transmission Line, Knocks Ohio Valley Station Off Air

A 100,000-watt country station in Ashland, Kentucky — WDGG 93.7 “The Dawg” — was knocked off the air last Thursday after a suspect allegedly cut and dragged away the main transmission line running from the transmitter building up the broadcast tower in Catlettsburg. Boyd County deputies later recovered the cut-up cable from the suspect’s yard a few hundred yards from the tower site, and Paul Crisp was arrested following a short pursuit. Investigators say the site’s video surveillance had been disabled beforehand, and the same location was hit by a separate copper theft on May 23, suggesting the job was scouted.

The damaged line is an unusual size and uses pressurized gas, ruling out a simple splice. Owner Kindred Communications estimates repairs at $70,000–$100,000, with cable running up to $160 per foot. The station is limping along at roughly 10 watts on a backup transmitter and auxiliary antenna while engineers source an alternative route and assess possible damage to the main antenna.

Beyond the operational hit, the incident highlights the physical-security exposure of broadcast infrastructure: high-value copper, remote tower sites, and surveillance systems that can be neutralized in advance. The owner’s takeaway is blunt — copper theft can take any FM station dark, and keeping a couple hundred feet of spare transmission line on hand is cheap insurance against a long outage.