WIVT

WIVT (channel 34) is a television station in Binghamton, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside low-power, Class A NBC affiliate WBGH-CD (channel 20). The two stations share studios on Ingraham Hill Road in the town of Binghamton, where WIVT's transmitter is also located.

Alfred E. Anscombe, former general manager of WKBW-AM-TV in Buffalo, secured a construction permit for Binghamton's third television station on April 25, 1961. He named it WBJA-TV after his wife Beth J. Anscombe. Initially, the station was allocated to UHF analog channel 56. However, five years earlier, two competing ABC affiliates in Northeastern Pennsylvania (WILK-TV channel 34 in Wilkes-Barre and WARM-TV channel 16 in Scranton) merged to form WNEP-TV, retaining WILK's license but using WARM's old UHF channel 16.

Seeing a chance to use more signal at less cost, Anscombe sought and won a new construction permit for analog channel 34. The new station signed on November 24, 1962, from studios at its transmitter site on Ingraham Hill south of Binghamton; it was the third station to sign on in the Binghamton area, after WBNG and WICZ-TV. It has always been an ABC affiliate. The Northeastern Pennsylvania-area station now known as WOLF-TV signed on in 1985 on analog channel 38; it would eventually move to channel 56 thirteen years later.

Anscombe planned for WBJA to be the first station in a seven-station group; however, only one other station, WEPA-TV in Erie, Pennsylvania (now defunct; its channel 66 allocation was later used by WFXP), was started before the two stations were acquired by Gerald Arthur, Oliver Lazare, and Jules Hessen, a group who also owned WEEE in Rensselaer, in 1966. Pinnacle Communications bought WBJA in 1978 and changed the call letters to WMGC-TV on October 16, reflecting its new "Magic 34" branding. It dropped the branding by the mid to late-1980s, but retained the call letters.

Pinnacle sold WMGC to Citadel Communications in 1986; in 1995, Citadel sold the station, along with WVNY in Burlington, Vermont, to USA Broadcast Group, which was soon renamed U.S. Broadcast Group after a complaint from USA Network. U.S. Broadcast Group put its stations up for sale in early 1997; WSKG-TV contemplated acquiring WMGC and operating it as an NBC affiliate to raise money for its public broadcasting operations; during this time, a cable-only version of WETM (which would be replaced by WBGH-CD later that fall) served as the network's affiliate for the Binghamton market following WICZ's affiliation with Fox in April 1996. The station would be purchased by the Ackerley Group, which changed the call letters to WIVT on February 26, 1998. The call letters were derived from Ackerley's station in Syracuse, WIXT (now WSYR-TV).

A few months later, Ackerley nearly lost its investment. On May 31, 1998, a tornado ripped through WIVT's Ingraham Hill studios and destroyed its tower; radio stations WSKG, WSQX and WAAL also had their towers destroyed in that storm. WBNG had live reports that night literally from the WIVT facilities. The station had a feed restored to Time Warner Cable for customers in the immediate Binghamton area, but was off-the-air for several months. WIVT became a sister station to WBGH when that station was sold by Smith Television to Ackerley in 2000. Ackerley merged with Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia) on June 14, 2002. On April 20, 2007, the company entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group to Newport Television, a broadcasting group established by Providence Equity Partners; the deal was completed on March 14, 2008.

Newport announced on July 19, 2012, that it would sell 12 of its stations, including WIVT and WBGH, to Nexstar. The sale was completed on December 3. On September 16, 2013, it was announced that Mission Broadcasting would acquire WICZ and low-power MyNetworkTV affiliate WBPN-LP from the Stainless Broadcasting Company subsidiary of Northwest Broadcasting. Upon the deal's completion, the stations' operations would have been taken over by Nexstar making them sisters to WIVT and WBGH. In March 2015, Mission's purchase of WICZ and WBPN was canceled; as a result, Stainless withdrew the license assignment applications on March 18.

For the most part, WIVT has been a non-factor in the local newscast race in Binghamton. It has spent most of its history as the third station in what was at one point essentially a two-station market (since it did not sign-on until November 1962). The outlet reaped virtually no benefit when the area's long-time NBC affiliate WICZ switched to Fox in 1996. Immediately after taking control, the Ackerley Group significantly upgraded WIVT's news department with the ability to share resources with WIXT's well-respected news department in Syracuse as well as the company's other television properties in Upstate New York.