the top of the Phoenix television market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. On October 12, 1987, Taft was restructured into Great American Broadcasting after the company went through a hostile takeover by investors led by Carl Lindner. Other subsidiaries of Great American Communications Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993, a move that did not affect the television and radio holdings. The station changed its call sign to KSAZ-TV on February 12, 1994, to match its new slogan, "The Spirit of Arizona". As a Fox station After emerging from bankruptcy, Great American Broadcasting (renamed Citicasters soon after) put four of its stations (including KSAZ-TV) up for sale, seeking to raise money to pay down debt and fund more acquisitions in radio. KSAZ-TV, along with WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Missouri; WGHP in High Point, North Carolina; and WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama, were sold to New World Communications on May 5, 1994, for $360 million. Just 18 days later, New World announced that twelve of its 15 stations (those it already owned and those it was in the process of acquiring) would switch their varying Big Three network affiliations to Fox, which had been affiliated with KNXV-TV (channel 15). A major catalyst for the Fox-New World deal was the network's newly signed contract with the National Football League's National Football Conference. New World's portfolio, dominated by CBS affiliates, included many stations that had long aired the home games of NFC teams in their home cities, such as KSAZ and the Phoenix Cardinals. The affiliation changes—three of them in all—played out in phases. CBS was the first to move, leaving channel 10 for KPHO-TV on September 10, 1994. For three months between CBS's departure and Fox's arrival, KSAZ-TV was an independent station, filling the hole left by network programs with movies and additional syndicated shows while also using the opportunity to debut a suite of new news programs. Fox programs moved to KSAZ on December 12. In the aftermath of the change, channel 10 management faced the task of melding the station's more mainstream image with the new Fox programming, which proved difficult. Not only did the news programs rate poorly, but the station let go of valuable news lead-ins Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune as skewing too old in viewership, and the competition by KTVK and KNXV was more aggressive than KSAZ-TV had anticipated. In June 1995, general manager