WVBN
| City | Turin, New York |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Black River Valley |
| Frequency | 107.7 MHz |
| First air date | October 1948 |
| Last air date | 1951 |
| Format | Defunct |
| ERP | 1,300 watts |
| HAAT | 215 meters (705 feet) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 43°38′55″N 75°29′00″W / 43.64861°N 75.48333°W |
| Owner | Rural Radio Network |
| Sister stations | WFNF, WVBT, WVCV, WVFC |
WVBN (107.7 FM) was a commercial radio station located atop Gomer Hill in the Town of Turin, New York, which began broadcasting in October 1948 on 107.7 MHz with an effective radiated power of 1.3 kW at 215 m (705 ft) above average terrain. It was the northernmost of six owned-and-operated stations of the Rural Radio Network (RRN), an innovative broadcast service for upstate New York farmers, and the first radio station in Lewis County, NY. Launched when a scant five-to-ten percent of rural households had acquired FM receivers, WVBN's relatively weak signal and narrowly targeted programming failed to reach a significant audience. After suffering severe financial losses, RRN decided to surrender the WVBN license in 1951 and the FM allocation to Turin, NY was permanently deleted.
In an attempt to provide maximum regional coverage at minimum operating expense, RRN's consulting engineers recommended that the network's six transmitting sites should be spaced roughly 80 km (50 mi) apart and built on "commanding elevations" at least 610 m (2000 ft) AMSL. For WVBN, the planners selected a remote summit known as Gomer Hill, the highest point in Lewis County, NY and the peak of the Tug Hill Plateau, a sparsely populated wooded region directly east of Lake Ontario known for dramatic deposits of lake effect snow. Approximate coordinates: 43°38′55″N 75°29′00″W / 43.64861°N 75.48333°W
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