WVBG-LD

WVBG-LD, virtual channel 25 (UHF digital channel 17), is a low-power Buzzr-affiliated television station licensed to Greenwich, New York, United States. The station is owned by Wireless Access, LLC, a group of rural telephone companies in Upstate New York and Vermont, and operates as a translator of Cobleskill-licensed WYBN-LD (channel 14). WVBG-LD's transmitter is located in Clarksville, New York. History What is now WVBG-LD has its origins in a translator station on channel 4 serving Gilboa, Prattsville, and Roxbury, operated by the Board of Cooperative Educational Services of the Third Supervisory District of Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties and carrying programming from WMHT in Schenectady, WCNY-TV in Syracuse, and WNDT in New York City. The station, which was granted its construction permit in 1966, went on the air two years later as W04AS. On February 8, 1991, the Otsego-Northern Catskills BOCES transferred the station to the WSKG Public Telecommunications Council; by this point, W04AS was a translator for WSKG-TV in Binghamton. On May 17, 1996, WSKG filed an application to move W04AS to channel 25 in Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, New York, with a transmitter located on the Helderberg Escarpment. That July, Vision 3 Broadcasting announced that it would purchase W04AS and operate the station as the flagship of a group of three low-power television stations in the Capital District, along with W83AL (channel 83) in Andes (which would have also been acquired from WSKG and be converted into W21BU channel 21 in Hudson, Catskill, and Chatham) and W02CJ (channel 2) in Manchester, Vermont (which was acquired from Ronald and Jan Morlino, two of Vision 3's principals, and converted to W39CE channel 39 in Glens Falls, Saratoga Springs, Easton, and Hudson Falls). The channel 21 signal was dropped from the network by 1997 after it was determined that its coverage area could be served with the channel 25 signal; by then, the group (which, despite each station operating on different channels, was branded simply "TV 25") also included W49BU (channel 49) in Manchester, Vermont. The move to channel 25 was granted a construction permit on October 2, 1997, and issued the call sign W25CF; on November 5, Vision 3's parent company Sharp Vision completed its purchase of the station from WSKG.