with KTNT-TV, national advertisers failed to materialize. The News Tribune described the station, in retrospect, as "a down-at-the-heels purveyor of old movies and used-car commercials". At the end of 1973, Blaidon filed to sell channel 13 to the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) of Portsmouth, Virginia; the filing alone signaled trouble, given that at the time, the FCC barred selling a station in less than three years of ownership unless the buyer demonstrated it was facing financial hardship. The station's remaining live programming, such as Flash Blaidon, was canceled. Over the course of 1974, KTVW's financial position deteriorated. On January 15, 40 employees staged a walk-out, forcing the station to go off the air, complaining about not having been paid in nearly four weeks. After they were paid by cashier's check, channel 13 resumed operations the next day, but employees remained skeptical of Blaidon's financial condition. By the end of January, Blaidon had pleaded with the FCC to expedite approval of the CBN transfer; president Don Wolfstone expected the Internal Revenue Service to lock up his offices for failing to pay withholding taxes in the second half of 1973. The FCC approved the CBN transaction, but the buyer had second thoughts about the $5.1 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) purchase price of channel 13 and asked for several time extensions to consummate the purchase. In July, MCA Television, among KTVW's largest creditors, successfully petitioned for the appointment of a receiver to manage the station's affairs. Despite a brief improvement in financial position when the receiver separated KTVW from Blaidon, the CBN sale fell apart over its refusal to assume all of the television station's liabilities. The bankruptcy court approved a second offer from the Suburban Broadcasting Company, which owned WSNL in Patchogue, New York, but this deal collapsed, as Suburban also refused to assume the station's liabilities. As a result, court-appointed trustee Bruce Clements decided he had seen enough. On the afternoon of December 12, 1974, at 5:10 p.m., KTVW was airing a rerun of Batman when he ordered the station to go off the air at 5:30 upon that program completing its airing. By the end of January 1975, the bankruptcy court was entertaining two "very firm offers" for the station. In 1976, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Blaidon, alleging that they had sold stock to non-Washington residents without SEC approval and issued misleading financial reports to