company, but after 11 months had not found anyone willing to pay price that the board felt was appropriate, so in mid-March 1999 founder Roger Brodersen called off the search for a buyer. One week later on 24 March, Brodersen and four other directors resigned and Peter Kamin was named the new chairman. Kamin, the leader of a stockholders group that pressed to sell the company, resumed the search for a buyer. In April 2000, the New York City-based private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson agreed to buy out DTN for $451M, including $91M in debt. DTN at the time had approximately 166,000 clients. Veronis implemented a new strategy by splitting DTN into four separate divisions: agriculture, energy, weather, and financial services. Robert Gordon, who would later become DTN CEO, was hired to run the weather division. Staffing up the four divisions proved slow and costly, and by 2003 sales were lower than in 1998. DTN entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2003 and its operation was taken over by a consortium of banks led by Wachovia, DTN's lead creditor. DTN emerged from bankruptcy six weeks later. Revival (2004–2007) Robert Gordon became president in January and CEO in July 2004. He gradually reduced staff to 675, eliminated redundancies, and pushed a new strategy of selling proprietary data at a premium price. Customers paid larger subscription fees ($100 a month for many weather customers) to receive customized, hourly webcasts based on more precise computer models; ag customers paid roughly 50% more for analyses of issues like Asian soybean rust and avian influenza; and energy customers gained access to online exchanges with real-time fuel prices. Gordon's strategy proved successful and DTN began to re-expand. In July 2006 DTN acquired St. Louis-based Surface Systems, Inc. (SSI), a company specializing in weather monitors for roads and airport runways, and integrated its customers and its network of 6000 surface sensors into its Meteorlogix division. In 2007 it acquired the majority of the Edmond, Oklahoma company WeatherBank, integrating its energy, transportation, public safety, and agriculture weather forecasting customers into Meteorlogix. In 2007 DTN also arranged with publisher Time Warner to acquire The Progressive Farmer, an agricultural magazine founded in 1886 and read at the time of acquisition by approximately 600,000 subscribers. The deal for an undisclosed sum supported Time Warner's strategy of shedding smaller publications to focus on its larger magazine properties and DTN's mission of