WBNL Keeps Its Focus On The Community

From Bailey Loosemore, courierpress,com

1450 AM WBNL, your hometown radio station, has brought music to Boonville since Jack Sanders and Norman Hall built the station in 1950. They began with a 250-Watt Gates Transmitter, a 195-foot tower and a building big enough to fit their minimal equipment and nothing else.

In the late 1960s, Hall and Sanders added an FM station, 107.1, that has since been bought by John Patrick Englebrecht and turned into Evansville's Jack FM. Englebrecht originally bought both the AM and FM frequencies in 2000 but sold the AM frequency to Turpen a year later.

According to the station's website, Turpen brought with him upgraded programming and music as well as equipment and sound quality.

"Other engineers marvel at our sound quality on AM," Turpen said, "and I'm pretty proud of that. It has a full, nice, crisp sound to it."

Turpen has been in the radio business for more than 50 years, with his first job at WEOA in the YMCA building downtown. He then worked at various other stations before taking a job at WIKY for 11 years.

After WIKY, he accepted a job at Alcoa for 25 years, continuing to service other radio stations and managing WVHI at the same time. In 2000, he retired from Alcoa and managed WBNL before buying it in 2001.

"It was my personal goal to own and operate a popular radio station," Turpen said.

And in the Boonville community, WBNL is as popular as they come.

"The community has taken to our programming very well," Turpen said. "If we're not on the air, they call. They want to know why."

WBNL targets women who are 25 or older, Turpen said.

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