to go on the air; W39CE (later renamed WVBX-LP; now WEPT-CD channel 15 in Newburgh) signed on in December 1997, and W49BU (later renamed WVBK-LP; now WHNH-CD channel 2) went on in March 1998, with WVBG itself debuting on August 27, 1998. Initially an independent station, WVBG and its satellites became a UPN affiliate on October 5, 1998; it already carried the UPN Kids block, but the network's primetime programming had previously been seen in the Capital District through secondary affiliations with Fox affiliate WXXA-TV (channel 23) and Pax station WYPX (channel 55), as well as cable carriage of WSBK-TV from Boston. However, from its inception, the station could not get carriage on Time Warner Cable, which chose to continue its carriage of WSBK; this was despite acquiring several sports packages, including Big East football and basketball, the Boston Red Sox (the telecasts of which were dropped following a territorial complaint by the New York Yankees), and the Boston Celtics. WVBG-LP changed its city of license to Greenwich, New York on April 22, 1999 (Greenwich had earlier been added as a fourth city of license after Albany, Schenectady, and Troy); this helped Vision 3 win must-carry rights in Washington County on December 3, 1999. However, the UPN affiliation ended at the start of 2000 when cable-only "WEDG-TV" (known later as "UPN 4") signed on as a joint operation between Time Warner Cable and WXXA. WVBG would then revert to being an independent station, heavily emphasizing its status as a primarily over-the-air station; that June, Vision 3 put WVBG and WVBX up for sale, and by 2001 much of the station's schedule was taken up by Resort Sports Network programming. On June 28, 2001, WVBG-LP was sold to Wireless Access, a group of telephone companies in the region, as part of plans to introduce wireless Internet service. However, the plan was never implemented, and by early 2003 channel 25 had gone off the air; it returned a year later airing color bars. On September 2, 2005, WVBG was granted a construction permit to move to channel 41. The station lost its transmitter site lease on November 30, 2006, forcing the station off-the-air until getting special temporary authority to operate from a new location in Clarksville (the proposed site for the channel 41 operation) a year later. Broadcasting on channel 25 ended on August 10, 2008; on September 3, the station filed