AM History Profile: WLVN

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History:

This station dates back to an original construction permit issued to Crenshaw County Broadcasting (Ned N. Butlers and Marshall C. Martin) in 1968, for a station on 1080 kHz, with 500 watts, days only. 

The station signed on in 1970 with a Country music format, transmitting from a site two miles south of Luverne on US-331.  In 1973, the station was sold to Joe Sport; he kept the country for a while but flipped it later to Middle of the Road (MOR) music by the mid-70's. 

Lew Banks and Ted Pacheco purchased the station in late 1983; shortly after the flipped it back to a mix of Country and Gospel music.  They ran the station for the better part of another decade, but it appears to have gone off the air permanently by about 1992 or 1993.  The license was finally deleted in February 1997. 

The WLVN calls (briefly) reappeared in the same area when they were assigned to a new permit by Brantley Broadcast Associates on 1030 kHz a few years after this station's demise, but that other facility was never built out.  It would have, at one point, even transmitted from the same site this station used.

[Google Map] Site of studio and transmitter, south of Luverne.