Behind the Scenes: New Equipment at 560 KMON

This fall will mark 560 KMON's 75 anniversary.  As you can imagine, there have been changes over that time, and this week saw a rather sizable one take place.

Some of you may remember that back in late January and early February, KMON was off the air for a solid week.  Our transmitter, which has served us for the last 25 years, suffered a massive failure, with components breaking and even catching fire.

Those black scorch marks are not a good sign, meaning these pieces of the transmitter were ruined beyond repair.

That crack isn't a good thing, either.

To make things worse, trying to find parts for a 25+ year old transmitter is a lot like trying to find parts for a vintage car.  It's not a fast or cheap process.  But, thanks to donated parts and manpower from engineers across the Townsquare Media family, we managed to get back up and running as fast as possible, albeit at less than full power .

That changed on Thursday.

Earlier this week, KMON-AM received a brand new transmitter, and on Thursday afternoon, it went live, so for the first time in about five months, KMON-AM is running at full power.

As a bonus, I thought I'd include a couple other pictures from the transmitter building, showing a little bit more of KMON's history.

Sadly, this piece of radio history doesn't work anymore.  This bad boy is big enough that you can actually get inside it, which is what the engineers actually did to work on it back in the day.  Now, all that and more fits in something the size of the new transmitter.

So here's to our new transmitter.  I hope it lasts a long time with us.