completed in December of that year following securement of financing for the deal. In May 1994, New World Communications, which would sign an affiliation deal with Fox on May 22, agreed to purchase the four outlets from Argyle – in a deal structured as a purchase option – for $717 million. However two weeks earlier on May 5, New World also decided to purchase four television stations from Great American Communications, among them WBRC, for $350 million in cash and $10 million in share warrants. New World was able to finalize its purchase of WBRC on October 12, 1994, because the transfer applications for the Argyle stations were not submitted to the FCC until after those involved in the purchase of the Citicasters (to which Great American Communications was subsequently renamed) stations was already finalized. However, WBRC and fellow ABC affiliate WGHP in High Point, North Carolina were immediately placed in an outside trust company as Citicasters restructured its plans for both stations and decided to sell them directly to Fox's owned-and-operated station group, Fox Television Stations, once it discovered New World's plan to purchase the Argyle stations (both purchases conflicted with two aspects of the FCC's media ownership regulations; the purchases of WBRC and WVTM would have violated rules that prohibited a single company from owning both the #1 and the #2 television stations in the same market, plus both group deals would have given New World three more stations than the agency allowed at the time under its 12-station national television ownership limit). In January 1995, while the group awaited the Argyle purchase to receive approval by the FCC, New World took over the operations of the Argyle stations, including WVTM, through time brokerage agreements. The transfers of WBRC and WGHP to the trust were completed on April 3, 1995, while the New World purchase of the Argyle stations closed on April 14. New World's purchase of the remaining three Argyle stations was finalized on April 18, 1995. As a result of New World's option to sell WBRC to Fox, WVTM retained its NBC affiliation (KNSD in San Diego was the only other New World station that remained with NBC, as Fox already had a VHF affiliate in San Diego at the time, XETV (which eventually became a CW affiliate but is now a Canal 5 station targeting Tijuana, Mexico), whereas KNSD broadcast on the UHF band; the