I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the situation was something along the lines of: they were having financial difficulties and decided they could get away with not broadcasting on AM…sold the tower and equipment for scrap. Eventually someone notices and notifies the FCC. FCC contacts the operator and eventually they send out a bush hog crew to make the “discovery”.
How would they have realtime monitoring unless they have a receiver in every city in the country? This happened in Jasper Alabama, not Los Angeles California.
I think its possible that they only send someone out once a year to check for active frequencies. When they see a problem (AM 1259 is missing) then they send out the brush crew.
Point being, I highly doubt that realtime monitoring exists everywhere. The owner of this station probably banked on the fact that no one's watching Jasper Alabama that closely. When someone at the FCC gets their annual paperwork about this station, they probably just do a cursory check on it and push it through, not putting a lot of time or energy into this tiny station.
