This video was taken in January of 2007 inside the doghouse at the base of a 400 foot AM broadcast tower. The tower is part of a two-tower directional array. The balls are actually static/lightning arrestors used to protect our equipment from direct or nearby lightning strikes and wind static. The static charges jump across the balls and are safely dissipated to ground. What you see here is the result of ice falling off the tower and bending the transmission line, causing the balls to be smashed together (instead of about 3/4″ apart like they normally would be), thus shorting the tower to ground through the balls.

This particular tower is not used during the day when this was filmed, but the arcing you see is from power being imposed on the unused tower from the 5,000 watts being radiated from the day tower 500 feet away.

The rings you see when I zoom out toward the end of the video are actually a big transformer used to power the aviation beacons (lighting) on the tower.

And yes, the audio you hear is Rush Limbaugh. The arcing is actually “modulated” with the station audio, as well as being imposed into the camera from the high RF field. The video interference is also from the high RF field.