It’s every broadcast engineer’s nightmare: a line of intense storms heading right for your station’s tower.

For Audacy’s KMOX in St. Louis, engineer Kyle Hammer faced especially intense pressure as an EF-3 tornado was bearing directly down on his facility. KMOX, after all, is the century-old “Voice of St. Louis,” the station generations of Midwesterners have turned to when they needed information, not to mention the Cards game.

But as I read Audacy’s news release praising Hammer for his work to keep KMOX on the air, something stood out. Do you see it at the end of this paragraph?

“The powerful twister ripped through the area, leaving a trail of significant destruction and plunging the entire vicinity into darkness, silencing the FM signal. The AM signal remained functional.”

For most of us reading this column, that “AM signal” is still what we think of when we think about KMOX. With 50,000 non-directional watts in the rich ground conductivity of southern Illinois, AM 1120 only recently ceased to be KMOX’s main signal. After putting the KMOX programming on an FM translator for a few years, Audacy just pulled the trigger in March on a programming shuffle that turned one of its full-power FM signals into the new KMOX-FM 104.1.

That’s been the norm for Audacy in recent years, as it’s moved its big news and talk stations to FM everywhere from New York to Los Angeles. We’re not here to litigate that decision – in most cases, it’s a perfectly sensible reaction to the choices real-world listeners have long since made, abandoning any interest in the AM dial in favor of the lower noise and more familiar surroundings of the FM band.

It’s a choice that’s likely to pay off for KMOX in the long run, too, helping the station to stave off the inevitable aging of its audience that was only going to accelerate on the AM dial.

(Data point: a few years ago, the FCC tried to auction off four vacant AM facilities in the St. Louis market, including the nearly full-market 1430. There were no bidders.)

But let’s go back to the Audacy news release.

“As soon as it was safe, Hammer got in his truck for the three-mile drive that took about an hour and a half. There were dozens of downed trees and power lines, some blocking the entire road. Finally reaching the ravaged site, he restored power, bringing FM back online. In the wake of a catastrophic natural disaster, the station’s return to the airwaves provided a crucial service, ensuring listeners had access to the most up-to-date information during a time of immense need and uncertainty.”

And now, perhaps, you see the contradiction I saw. Because while AM 1120 may not be the sexy new thing on the dial, it’s still there, still operating from a very hardened facility specifically designed to stay on the air through the very worst weather a Midwest spring can throw at it.

What’s more, Audacy itself has been part of the ongoing legislative push to keep AM radio mandated in cars. What’s the rationale for that legislation? You could summarize it this way, come to think of it: “ensuring listeners (have) access to the most up-to-date information during a time of immense need and uncertainty.”

Can radio have it both ways, as the NAB tried to do with their retweet of the Audacy release this week?

It’s certainly admirable that Kyle Hammer got the job done and kept the KMOX-FM signal on the air through the storm. But as long as stations like KMOX, KNX and KYW still keep their venerable AM signals on the air, perhaps the same companies that are on Capitol Hill lobbying for the importance of AM in cars could stand to remind their FM listeners every now and again that when conditions get treacherous, those good old AM facilities are right there as an important tool in radio’s emergency offerings?

Scott Fybush is the editor of NorthEast Radio Watch. Check out a free preview edition this week at fybush.com, where you can also listen to new episodes of the Top of the Tower Podcast.