WNAL outright and converted both stations into full-time satellite stations of WTTO, resulting in the removal of local programming on the former two stations. By 1994, the WTTO/WDBB/WNAL combination had become one of the highest-rated Fox affiliates in the country, and managed to overtake then-underperforming CBS affiliate WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT) as the third-highest-rated television station in central Alabama. Late that year, both WDBB and WNAL began airing separate programming during the daytime and late evening hours, consisting of syndicated sitcoms, drama and animated series that WTTO did not hold the rights to broadcast as well as local newscasts. That same year, the Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired WTTO, WDBB and WNAL when it merged with Abry Communications, which also assumed a local marketing agreement with WABM (a deal signed the previous year when WABM was sold to a locally based group). In 1995, WNAL was purchased by Fant Broadcasting, but continued to simulcast WTTO's programming through a time brokerage agreement. As a CBS affiliate In March 1994, Great American Communications agreed to sell WBRC to New World Communications, as part of a deal that also involved three of the former group's other television stations (WDAF-TV in Kansas City, KSAZ-TV in Phoenix and WGHP in High Point, North Carolina). Subsequently, three weeks later, New World agreed to purchase WVTM and three other stations (KTVI in St. Louis, KDFW in Dallas, and KTBC in Austin, Texas) from Argyle Television Holdings. New World was now faced with the prospect of having to divest as many as three of the acquired stations as the FCC forbade broadcasting companies from owning two commercial television stations in the same market, and restricted them from owning more than twelve stations nationwide (the concurrent acquisitions of the Argyle and Citicasters stations put New World three stations over the national television ownership cap). On May 23, 1994, six months after the network signed a deal with the National Football League (NFL) to acquire the rights to the National Football Conference television package, New World signed an affiliation agreement with Fox to switch twelve of its television stations—six that New World had already owned and eight that the company was in the process of acquiring through the Argyle and Citicasters deals, including WBRC—to the network, once their existing affiliation contracts with CBS, NBC or ABC expired. Although WTTO was one of Fox's strongest affiliates at the