station to Fox's television station subsidiary, Fox Television Stations, on October 12, 1994; Fox, in turn, planned to convert WBRC into an owned-and-operated station of the network (New World had signed an affiliation agreement with Fox in May 1994, to switch most of the television stations it already owned or was in the process of acquiring from Argyle Communications and Citicasters to the network, but exempted WVTM from the agreement due to its sale of WBRC to Fox); however, ABC's affiliation with that station did not expire until August 31, 1996, forcing Fox to continue to run WBRC as an ABC affiliate, while that network sought another station to become its new affiliate for central Alabama. ABC initially approached WTTO, which was about to lose its Fox affiliation to WBRC. However, WTTO was not willing to build a news department; at the time, its owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, did not budget for local news programming on its non-Big Three stations. It was only willing to carry ABC's prime time and sports programming. Knowing that it was about to be displaced from a station that had dominated the ratings for over 30 years, ABC wanted to affiliate with a station that at least had a functioning news department. With this in mind, ABC approached WBMG for a deal. Despite channel 42's anemic ratings, ABC saw enough promise that it even offered to buy WBMG outright; instead, for undisclosed reasons, Park Communications signed a long-term affiliation deal with CBS. In January 1996, ABC signed an affiliation agreement with Allbritton Communications for its newly acquired stations, WCFT-TV and WJSU-TV (the latter of which Allbritton had agreed to operate under a local marketing agreement with then-owner Osborne Communications Corporation weeks prior), which developed a unique arrangement in which both would combine their operations to act as full-powered satellites of low-power station W58CK (channel 58, now WBMA-LD), whose signal did not extend outside of Jefferson and Shelby counties. The arrangement was made because WCFT and WJSU would not be counted in Nielsen ratings reports for Birmingham, since Tuscaloosa and Anniston were separate markets, which would have prevented ABC programming in the market from being counted toward the network's national viewership counts. At that time the switch took place on September 1, 1996, CBS decided to affiliate with another central Alabama station, WNAL-TV (channel 44, now Ion Television O&O WPXH-TV) in Gadsden, a former Fox affiliate