north-of-due-east of Birmingham), which would have required an application to change the city of license closer to Birmingham in order to legally allow the move. Shortly after the WJSU purchase took place, ABC reached a unique deal with Allbritton, in which WCFT and WJSU would become the new ABC affiliates for Central Alabama, with WCFT acting as the main station. ABC had a very strong relationship with Allbritton, particularly as Allbritton's flagship station, WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., had long been one of ABC's highest-rated affiliates. In April 1996, a few months after the Birmingham deal was struck, Allbritton's ties to ABC were sealed wholesale when Allbritton reached a ten-year affiliation agreement with ABC that renewed contracts with the group's five existing ABC affiliates (WJLA-TV, WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia, KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, KTUL in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and WHTM in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; WHTM was in the process of being acquired by Allbritton at the time of the deal) and resulted in two of its other stations switching to the network (NBC affiliate WCIV [now Heroes & Icons affiliate WGWG] in Charleston, South Carolina, and WB affiliate WBSG-TV [now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WPXC-TV] in Brunswick, Georgia, the latter of which would become a satellite of WJXX in nearby Jacksonville, Florida, when Allbritton signed that station on in February 1997). A key problem with the deal, however, was that under Nielsen rules, neither WCFT nor WJSU would likely be counted in the Birmingham ratings books as it had designated Tuscaloosa and Anniston as separate markets at the time. Allbritton's solution to this issue was to purchase W58CK, a low-power independent station in Birmingham that began operations on November 18, 1994 (under the ownership of Shirley James), which would serve as the primary station for the purpose of being counted in local ratings diaries. While the purchase of channel 58 was not a condition of the deal between ABC and Allbritton, it did pave the way for Anniston and Tuscaloosa to be consolidated back into the Birmingham television market in September 1998 (at the start of the 1998–99 television season). That move benefited all of the major Birmingham stations, as it not only increased their viewership in Tuscaloosa and Anniston, but also resulted in Birmingham's placement in Nielsen's national market rankings jumping twelve spots from 51st to 39th place. W58CK became an ABC affiliate on September 1, 1996, at which time WCFT