Local conservative talk radio station KPNW AM 1120 has been off the air since Friday, and while station managers are blaming sizzling weekend temperatures, some listeners have other ideas.
Since the station’s transmitter failed early Friday morning, Program Director Bill Lundun says, the phone lines have been jammed with concerned callers.
Some are conspiracy theorists, convinced that the Obama administration is behind the outage.
Ted Egan, an 80-year-old listener from Veneta, said Monday that while the station says it’s had problems with the transmitter, he thinks something else may have happened.
“You listen to these guys talk, and they are really down on this guy Obama. They really blast him,” he said. “I don’t think he likes it, and I think he has the power to do something. To think, in this day and age that this station can just be off the air for three days … it seems strange.”
Other listeners have told the KPNW staff that the liberal media is to blame for their favorite talk-show hosts — Lars Larson and Rush Limbaugh — going off the air.
“One caller said he was convinced that a group of liberal terrorists had gone and attacked our transmitter,” Lundun said. “Obviously that was not the case.”
Problems started Fri-day, when the station’s main transmitter failed.
Hoping to keep their broadcast going, station officials switched to a 60-year-old backup transmitter, which allowed the station to broadcast until Sunday morning.
But the station went off the air again, and when an engineer arrived at the south Eugene site to fix it, he found a room full of smoke — the older transmitter had caught fire.
Now, the station is scrambling to get back on the air, Lundun said. He hopes that will happen today, but the wait may be longer.
“It’s going to take a lot of work,” he said. “It’s really iffy at this point.”
In an effort to help, McKenzie River Broadcasting offered to loan spare parts to KPNW, which is owned by Bicoastal Media.
“We’re going to try to jury-rig something and get it on the air for a little while,” Lundun said. “Our first priority is to get the station back on the air.”
