Economic problems surrounding early UHF television stations played a major role in its demise and in its pursuit of a VHF channel assignment for Elmira, which was first granted and then taken away.

[4] By the end of November, work was underway on a new transmission tower atop South Mountain, also known as Comfort Hill, in Ashland, Chemung County, New York, [5] Elmira Television set a May 15, 1953, deadline to get on air;[6] in March, the group modified its application to reduce the proposed effective radiated power because of an equipment shortage while raising the height of the tower.

[11] In addition to CBS, ABC, and DuMont, NBC programs were seen until the newspapers' station, WECT (channel 18), came on the air at the end of September.

[14] The group had also filed to build a new radio station to broadcast on 800 kHz during the day, though a conflict had been identified with a proposed outlet in Wellsville.

Wind gusts recorded at about 90 miles per hour (140 km/h) reached South Mountain and brought the station's 491 feet (150 m) transmission tower to the ground at 9:15 p.m., the single largest damage wrought by the storm in the Elmira area.

[19] However, ideas of reconstruction were overshadowed by an attempt already underway on the part of WTVE's ownership to move a VHF television station allocation—one that would not require sets to be converted, unlike on UHF—to the Elmira area.

[25] Binghamton mayor Donald W. Kramer, owner of Southern Tier Radio Service, noted that the assignment of channel 9 in either Elmira or Blossburg would put an end to the proposed WINR-TV.

[27] Both stations were ordered on the air by January 1956, with the FCC stating that economic uncertainty surrounding UHF was not a valid reason for further extensions of time to build or rebuild.

[32] By that time, there were four different applications filed for channel 9: the bids from WTVE and the Star-Gazette, one connected to radio station WELM, and a fourth from the Veterans Broadcasting Company of Rochester.

After missing a February 1 deadline[34] and being held up by unusual winter weather,[35] a new 500 feet (150 m) mast was erected atop South Mountain,[36] tests began in late April, and WTVE signed on again on May 6, 1956, with programs from NBC and ABC, as well as William W. Scranton—owner of WARM-TV in that Pennsylvania city—as a new 30-percent owner.

Elmira joined Evansville, Indiana; Fresno, California; Hartford, Connecticut; Madison, Wisconsin; and Peoria and Springfield, Illinois, as cities where the FCC proposed a change in channel assignments to deintermix the area.

[48] Two weeks earlier, on February 13, WTVE shut down, with Cassel citing losses of over $350,000 in 44 months of operation and an inability to secure network programming, compounded by the September 1956 launch of WSYE-TV, the satellite station of WSYR-TV.