yet another new tower in 1974. Even still, WBMG's signal remained rather weak after the signal boost, effectively limiting its coverage area to Birmingham itself, Jefferson County, and close-in suburbs in Chilton and Shelby counties. This came back to haunt the station when cable arrived in Birmingham later in the 1970s. While this should have eliminated the disadvantage of being a UHF station serving such a large market, many cable providers in the western and eastern portions of the market refused to pick up channel 42 because its signal in those areas was weak to the point of unacceptability. With this in mind, CBS retained affiliations with WCFT and WHMA/WJSU, which regularly trounced WBMG in the ratings for their respective regions. This was especially true in Anniston since WBMG's signal did not cover east-central portions of Alabama well at all during that period, because of the higher elevations of the Appalachian foothills. What little market share WBMG had accrued in those areas dwindled even further when Arbitron separated Tuscaloosa and Anniston into separate markets (despite the fact that WCFT, WJSU and WCIQ were the only television stations in either market, which were otherwise served by the three VHF stations out of Birmingham) in 1977. Even when local news programming returned to the station in 1987 after a seven-year hiatus, WBMG had no luck whatsoever competing with WVTM-TV and WBRC in news or sign-on to sign-off viewership, leading many industry insiders to deem Birmingham a de facto two-station market. Channel 42 was perennially one of CBS' weakest affiliates, in marked contrast to its competitors, which were two of their networks' strongest affiliates. It even trailed WTTO (channel 21, now a CW affiliate), an independent station, and later a Fox affiliate, that had only been on the air since April 1982. By some measures, it was the weakest major-network affiliate in the nation. The station's performance was so weak that, by the early 1990s, WBMG was only ahead of another independent station, WABM (channel 68, now a MyNetworkTV affiliate), in the Birmingham ratings. In many cases, A. C. Nielsen couldn't even rate CBS' programs in Birmingham, since the sample sizes were too small to generate a rating. To absolve ownership conflicts caused by its near-concurrent purchases of WVTM and WBRC, New World Communications decided to establish an outside trust company that it would place WBRC into, with the intent to sell the