loss of the station's news programming for a time beginning in 1982. He served as general manager until his December 1983 death from cancer at the age of 35. The 1980s would bring expanded coverage for WLIW in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, thanks to increased carriage on cable systems. A station that in 1985 was still trying to recover from its attempt to be a "junior Channel 13" in the eyes of William Renn, a professor at Hofstra University, had by 1990 leaned into its growing reach, with 62 percent of its members coming from outside Long Island and a viewership that put it in the top ten nationally among public TV stations. It also was profitable for the first time in its history. Despite this, political leaders on Long Island continued to clamor for increased local programming. The station also had to fight for its expanded cable carriage after must-carry rules were abolished in 1985. Some cable providers dropped the station citing duplication to WNET and to the station's over-the-air broadcast. Paragon Cable's Manhattan system dropped WLIW in 1987 and replaced it with the Cable Value Network, a home shopping channel, only to restore it weeks later after protests from subscribers. The early 1990s saw funding cutbacks that once again prompted the cancellation of local productions as the economy took a nosedive; state support of public television declined, and New York state instituted cutbacks across government. This spurred the further evolution of WLIW into a regional service as well as a reduced reliance on PBS programs to differentiate the station from WNET. WLIW was a founder of the Program Resources Group, a 13-station alliance consisting of secondary public TV stations formed to buy programs, and reduced the proportion of PBS programming on its schedule from between 80 and 90 percent to 30 percent while debuting more British programming. In 1998, the station began a 10-year association with the BBC to distribute BBC World News to public television stations in the United States; WLIW had previously offered news from ITN. By 2001, it had an office in Manhattan, at which 15 of its 65 employees worked. It also increased its production efforts to the point that 20 percent of its $11 million budget was attributed to selling its output—including ethnic documentaries such as A Laugh, a Tear, a Mitzvah—to other public TV stations. These were particularly popular for