One bay of the WMKC-FM (Indian River) antenna showing ice damage.

Last week, your MAB News Briefs highlighted three broadcast towers in northern Michigan that went down due to ice-build up during the severe weather that existed over several days.  As we wrote, the 600-foot tower of MacDonald Garber Broadcasting's WKHQ-FM (Charlevoix-Petoskey-Traverse City) was toppled.

Heritage Broadcasting’s WFUP-TV (Vanderbilt) saw the top section of its 630-foot tower snap off following Sunday's ice storms, taking the station off-air as well as Black Diamond Broadcasting's WGFM-FM (Cheboygan) and Smile FM's WTLI-FM (Bear Creek Township), both tenants on the WFUP tower. Then on Friday Morning (4/4), we learned that the 350-foot tower of 45 North Media's WMJZ-FM (Gaylord) was also toppled due to ice.

We have since had reports of three other towers down in our state: EMF's WAWM-FM (Petoskey), Northern Christian Radio's  WPHN-FM (Gaylord) and WFDX-FM (Atlanta) and MacDonald Garber Broadcasting's WLXT-FM (Petoskey),

In addition to affecting those stations directly, many of these sites host translators and STL equipment for other stations, thus affecting their operation also.

Longtime Michigan broadcast station owner/engineer Del Reynolds shared photos of damage to one station's antenna.  Black Diamond Broadcasting's WMKC-FM (Indian River) did not suffer tower loss, but all 10 bays of their FM broadcast antenna were bent, and all 10 radomes were busted.  The STL dish was also affected by ice.