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.