the signals of their then-new cable networks Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel (originally known as Star Channel). Both networks moved to an uplink facility in Hauppauge, New York, by the end of 1981, after Warner-Amex was unable to reach a deal with WIVB's ownership over a planned expansion of the facility to handle uplinking and studio programming for their new music video channel MTV. WIVB-TV nearly dropped its CBS affiliation and became an NBC affiliate in 1994, when King World put itself up for sale (NBC parent company General Electric's announced purchase of the company never materialized). After attempts by Westinghouse Broadcasting (whose parent company would later purchase CBS), New World Communications (to make the station a Fox affiliate), Tribune Broadcasting (to make a station a WB affiliate), Paramount Stations Group (to make a station a UPN affiliate) and E. W. Scripps Company (to make the station an ABC affiliate) to purchase the station fell through, WIVB-TV was sold to LIN TV Corporation (which would later take the name LIN Media) in 1995; King World was acquired by CBS in 2000 and has since been absorbed into Paramount Global's CBS Media Ventures unit, while E. W. Scripps would later acquire rival WKBW in 2014 and, ironically, WIVB's current parent Nexstar would later acquire Tribune in 2019. The new owner renewed the station's CBS affiliation through a long-term contract; it was renewed in 2014, along with most of the rest of the contracts for LIN's CBS affiliates, and will expire at an unknown date. As a result of the cancellation of the deal, Buffalo was one of the few NFL markets that was not affected by the affiliation switches. At the time of the aborted NBC purchase, WIVB-TV's viewership was in a strong second place in the local ratings, while NBC's existing affiliate WGRZ-TV was in third place, although not as distant as it had been throughout much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Both stations have since passed then-first-place WKBW-TV. WIVB-TV gained the local rights to the Buffalo Bills from WGRZ-TV in 1998, when the American Football Conference package moved to CBS. WGRZ-TV had aired most Bills games since 1965. Van Miller, channel 4's longtime sports director, was the Bills' play-by-play announcer from 1960 to 2003, except for a brief time in the 1970s when WKBW radio was the flagship. However, beginning in 2014 with the introduction of "cross-flex" scheduling,