WEAU and WAXX 104.5 began using the Fairchild tower on June 11th, 1966. It was the third television tower erected. The first TV tower was self supporting, standing at 500 feet high.  WEAU was known as the ‘Big Cheese’ when the first tower was built, which was 1,000 feet high. After the Fairchild Tower was constructed, the area was then known as ‘Tall Tower Territory’, as the new tower was a staggering 2,000 feet.

Since WAXX 104.5 was then owned by the same company that owned WEAU (the WAXX studios were in the WEAU building on Hastings Way), WAXX placed their FM radio antenna on the same tower (the FM station was known as WEAU-FM in 1966).  Even though WAXX later moved into its current building behind WEAU and is separately-owned, WEAU has and will continue to share antenna space on the tower.

The WEAU/WAXX broadcast tower stood as the tallest man made structure east of the Mississippi for 45 years. On March 22nd, 2011, it collapsed. While it’s still unclear exactly what caused the tower to fail, the weather that day was windy and icy, which could have caused collapse.