into the early 2010s. In 1985, Tribune—which would assume satellite distribution rights for the WGN national feed through its April 2001 purchase of the portion of United's UVTV unit that handled the feed's uplink and marketing responsibilities—began providing a direct microwave link of the WGN Chicago signal to United Video, providing it a second signal source in the event technical problems arose with the intercepted satellite signal and vice versa. WGN would become the only superstation to come close to reaching parity with WTBS, although it would continue to lag somewhat in coverage partly due to the two-year headstart of WTBS into the cable market. KTVU (channel 2) in Oakland–San Francisco followed behind on December 16, 1978, when Satellite Communications Systems uplinked the station onto a Satcom-1 transponder. (Holiday Inns Inc. would withdraw from the Southern Satellite Systems partnership by April 1979, leaving the latter to handle uplink and promotional responsibilities for KTVU.) Despite a programming inventory comparable to other independents (including holding rights to San Francisco Giants baseball games), SCS was unsuccessful in marketing KTVU to cable systems to reach the level of WTBS, WGN-TV and WOR-TV. In April 1980, Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment purchased the transponder space from SCS to distribute upstart music video channel MTV; KTVU's national cable distribution would be reduced to systems that already carried the station in the Western United States by early 1981. Eastern Microwave was somewhat more successful in distributing WOR-TV (which had been available to cable and CATV systems via microwave throughout much of the Northeastern United States since 1965), when it began retransmitting the New York station's signal to cable affiliates and C-band satellite receivers throughout the remainder of the country over transponder 17 of Satcom I in April 1979. Until WOR adopted a 24-hour schedule in 1980, the satellite feed initially included a backup feed of CBS-owned New York City station WCBS-TV (channel 2) during WOR's off-hours. Even though WOR had a similar film library as other superstations (further boosted by the acquisition of the Universal Pictures film library when MCA Inc. acquired the station in a $387-million deal with the legally embattled RKO General in April 1987) and held rights to events from several New York-area professional sports teams (including the New York Mets, the New York Rangers, the New Jersey Devils and the New York Knicks as well as college basketball games involving Big East Conference universities), the