Fire Knocks Carlisle Radio Station Off the Air

Posted @ Jan. 03 2012 07:50AM by Len Boccassini - city-beat

For more than 45 years, WIOO Country Gold Radio has served six counties; Cumberland and Franklin mainly, but also portions of Perry, Adams, Dauphin and York, with the classic country sounds of George Jones, Patsy Cline, Kenny Rogers and a host of others. Yesterday, their voices fell silent as an electrical fire ripped through the converted house and WIOO was knocked off the air.

The fire was apparently of electrical nature and began in the first floor ceiling. According to John Bruetsch, cheif public information officer for the Cumberland County Department of Public Safety, did not seem of suspicious origin and there were no injuries reported. This was mainly due to the fact that at the time the fire started, the station was running on auto-pilot due to the circumstances of the holiday weekend.

The fire was reported by a passerby who witnessed smoke coming from the building, and at 1:38 PM, firefighters were dispatched to the scene and arrived to see flames and smoke billowing from the aging structure.

The building, which contains WIOO, was a former residence with its interior rooms converted to studios and offices. In their efforts to control the flames, each of the building's windows were broken and a sizable hole was created in the structure's exterior. Luckily, the flames were contained within ten minutes or so by the more than sixty firefighters present on the scene.

Owned by the Swidler family since 1965, WIOO AM, was orinally a top-40, dawn-to-dusk station that went off the air each evening. Following a change in format to classic country and western of the 50's through the 90's, the station launched an FM translator broadcast in 2009, giving it a nightime presence on FM after its AM station leaves the air.

Although the long-term is unclear as to how WIOO will precede, the short-term is to keep the airwaves filled with limited broadcasts through their transmitter site until a more permanent solution has been decided upon.

One thing that has not been unclear, is how the community has embraced the tiny station; particularly that of other local media. According to Bob Carey, host of Garden Talk which is broadcast every Sunday morning at 11:30 AM on WIOO and its FM affiliates, "It's almost a case of broadcasters rallying to the broadcaster. I find it amazing."