Sports radio station offline due to flooded transmitter building

Flooding along the Mississippi River has claimed a Mississippi River Radio transmitter, knocking a Cape Girardeau radio station off the air. KGIR, also known as SEMO ESPN 1220AM, has been off the air since Monday when floodwaters near East Cape Girardeau, Illinois, flooded the station's transmitter building.

"It happened Monday evening when we went static," said Mike Renick, Mississippi River Radio's operations manager. "We were holding out hope it was something besides the floodwaters, but then we boated over to the transmitter location Tuesday morning and the water was just way higher than it has ever been."

The station's 250-watt transmitter and tower are east of East Cape Girardeau in a flooded field north of Illinois Route 146.

"The building has had water in it before, but it's never been this high," Renick said, and estimated there was about 3 feet of water in the building as of several days ago. "The highest before was only about 6 inches."

A station engineer removed water-damaged equipment from the transmitter building.

Floodwaters are seen inside the KGIR (SEMO ESPN 1220AM) transmitter building in East Cape Girardeau, Illinois.Submitted

"It could possibly be cleaned and be workable again, but we just really don't know at this point," Renick said and explained the station's tower, about 100 feet from the transmitter building, is also inoperable. "Even if we had a transmitter that could send the signal to the tower, we still wouldn't be on, because the tower itself has been compromised by higher water as well. The connections are underwater right now."

Floodwaters forced the Illinois Department of Transportation to close Route 146 on Friday night, preventing station staff from reaching the transmitter building until floodwaters recede and the highway reopens.

"We've heard it will be two weeks before the water gets down to a point that we can get back in there," Renick said. "It's on Mother Nature's timetable."

In the meantime, KGIR programming can still be heard online.

"All of our stations, including the SEMO ESPN station, have livestreaming on their websites," Renick noted and said broadcasts of the Cape Girardeau Catfish baseball games can also be heard on 960 KZIM until KGIR is back on the air.

KZIM's transmitter and towers are also near East Cape Girardeau, "but it's a two-story building and the transmitter is on the second floor," Renick said. "We have some feed lines that send signal out to the towers from the (KZIM) transmitter and have experienced some intermittent problems with them because of the water, but so far, so good."

The "best-case scenario," Renick said, is the KGIR transmitter can be repaired, reinstalled and back online in a couple of weeks. If it cannot be repaired, a new transmitter may need to be ordered, which will keep the station off the air longer.