WETM-TV (channel 18) is a television station in Elmira, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Nexstar Media Group. The station's studios are located on East Water Street in downtown Elmira, and its transmitter is located on Hawley Hill in Big Flats, New York. History Prior use of channel 18 The first user of channel 18 in Elmira was its second station, WECT, which was operated by El-Cor Television, a joint venture of the Corning Leader and the Elmira Star-Gazette. The station only operated for less than a year, from September 30, 1953, to May 27, 1954. El-Cor surrendered the station's license in September. WSYE-TV In late 1955, plans surfaced from two groups to reactivate channel 18 for use as a rebroadcaster of another station, one from WNBF-TV of Binghamton and one from WSYR-TV (channel 3), the NBC affiliate in Syracuse. After WNBF-TV dropped its proposal at the end of November, WSYR-TV was granted the construction permit by the FCC on April 4, 1956, and broadcasting began on September 15. The station telecast from the same Hawley Hill site used by WECT; while most programming came from Syracuse, the station did originate some programming from the Hawley Hill site. In 1980, Newhouse sold its entire television division, including WSYR and WSYE, to the Times Mirror Company. The new owners changed the call letters to WSTM-TV and WETM-TV, respectively. Times Mirror gradually cut the last ties between the two stations while establishing WETM-TV as a full-fledged station in its own right. It sold WETM to Smith Broadcasting in 1986. Smith moved the station's studios and sales units to a more central facility in Elmira in 1988. Under Smith's ownership, a reversal of the station's origins took place with the April 1996 launch of a cable-only Binghamton version of WETM-TV (known as NBC 5) through a local marketing agreement with Time Warner Cable, which would displace WNYW from cable systems in that area. Set up in the wake of established NBC affiliate WICZ-TV defecting to Fox, the arrangement saw Time Warner Cable sell Binghamton-market advertising and replace syndicated programs that aired on other Binghamton stations with programming acquired by WETM-TV for the Binghamton market due to syndex laws, while WETM-TV sold regional advertising seen in both markets. In 1997, Smith bought Binghamton low-power station WBGH-LP and made it an over-the-air semi-satellite of WETM-TV; WBGH eventually split off except for