marketed the action, weeks before the WWOR EMI Service was to be discontinued, Discovery Networks quickly purchased the feed's satellite transponder slot from Advance Entertainment to expand distribution of the fledgling Animal Planet network. About 12.5 million cable subscribers (most of which resided east of the Mississippi River) lost access to WWOR's programming as a consequence. Amid outcry from satellite dish owners, less than one week after the EMI Service feed was discontinued, the National Programming Service, LLC (NPS) subsidiary of carrier firm All American Direct uplinked the station's New York-area broadcast feed on a separate satellite transponder for exclusive distribution by satellite providers; since syndication exclusivity rules did not apply to home dish providers at the time, the NPS-delivered feed featured all syndicated and UPN network programs that could be seen by viewers in the New York City market. (Because of this, select cable providers picked up the NPS feed to serve as a default UPN programming source in markets where no local UPN affiliate existed, either due to the lack of a standalone fifth or sixth secular commercial station for an exclusive affiliation – particularly through the loss of affiliate clearances to The WB, as was the case in certain markets affected by that network's 1997 agreement with the Sinclair Broadcast Group – or the lack of a secondary clearance with an existing commercial network station.) The NPS-delivered feed was discontinued in 1999 to repurpose the transponder to distribute the national feed of Pax TV (now Ion Television), though Dish Network continues to distribute WWOR nationwide , primarily in areas that do not have a local MyNetworkTV affiliate. TBS, the national version of WTBS, evolved into a hybrid superstation on January 1, 1998. Upon undertaking the operational conventions of a traditional basic cable service, the national channel—which, following a series of name alterations between 1987 and 1996, was known at the time as TBS Superstation—began to collect subscriber fees and, as it was now effectively exempt from the 1976 Copyright Act's signal modification restrictions, began offering systems the ability to lease advertising time to participating providers for the sale and insertion of local commercials. The TBS cable channel, however, retained the WTBS signal as its originating feed and continued to simulcast almost all of the programming seen in the Atlanta market (except for Atlanta-targeted advertisements, and customary weekend morning blocks of public affairs and syndicated educational programs intended