did not subsequently join The WB. After WABM re-affiliated with UPN on August 10, 1998, WWOR was dropped from the few area cable systems that carried it within days of WABM's reunion with the network. To make up for the preemptions of the program caused by the disaffiliation, WABM aired an all-day Voyager marathon that November, showing all thirteen episodes that WABM was not able to air during the second half of the 1997–98 season, with the permission of UPN and the program's production company, Paramount Television. By the late 1990s, the station began to reduce the amount of classic sitcoms, movies and syndicated cartoons (such as Dennis the Menace and Sailor Moon) on its schedule, in favor of more recent sitcoms and the addition of talk, reality and court shows. Channel 68 continued to air animated series on weekday mornings until August 2003, when UPN discontinued its children's program block, Disney's One Too. On May 20, 2000, more than a decade after most television stations had converted to the audio format, WABM began transmitting its programming with stereophonic sound. In 2001, Sinclair purchased WABM outright, creating the Birmingham–Tuscaloosa–Anniston market's first television duopoly with WTTO/WDBB. MyNetworkTV affiliation On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of MyNetworkTV, a new "sixth" broadcast network that would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created to compete against another upstart network that would launch at the same time that September, The CW (which assumed the scheduling model and most programming operations of The WB, but originally consisted primarily of a mix of UPN and The WB's higher-rated programs) as well as to give UPN- and WB-affiliated stations that were not named as charter CW affiliates another option besides converting into independent stations. On March 1, 2006 (five days before Sinclair announced an agreement to affiliate 17 of its UPN, WB and independent stations with the network), Sinclair Broadcast Group and Fox Entertainment Group announced that WABM would become the market's charter affiliate of MyNetworkTV. WABM joined the network when MyNetworkTV launched on September 5, 2006; WTTO/WDBB became Central Alabama's CW charter affiliate when that network launched on September 18. For a time, WABM had considered acquiring the local broadcast rights to 4Kids TV, the Fox network's children's program block via a time-lease agreement with 4Kids Entertainment. Sister station WTTO had continued to carry its predecessor,