station at a loss for the same price six years later to John and Betty Ann Mulderrig of New York, who owned no other television stations, at a time when it had "turned the corner", per its general manager. Mulderrig had previously been an executive at WWOR-TV in the New York City area. KCIK-TV was posting ratings in some time periods that made it one of the highest-rated independent stations in the United States, and it had made money for the first time ever in 1987. To enhance its connection to the network, the station at the start of 1994 changed its call letters to KFOX-TV. Mulderrig moved the station later that year into a former Coronado Bank building at 6004 North Mesa Street, having outgrown the original studios on Stanton Street. In 1996, Mulderrig sold KFOX-TV for $21 million to Cox Television, bringing to a close an eight-year ownership that had seen the station and its network grow. Cox started a local newsroom in El Paso in 1997. Purchase by Sinclair and merger with KDBC On July 20, 2012, one day after Cox purchased four television stations in Jacksonville and Tulsa, Oklahoma, from Newport Television, Cox put KFOX-TV and three other television operations in smaller markets—Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Steubenville, Ohio, and Reno, Nevada—along with several of its radio stations in medium to small markets up for sale. On February 25, 2013, Cox announced that it would sell the four television stations to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The sale was approved by the FCC on April 29 and finalized on May 2. That April, Titan TV Broadcast Group filed to sell CBS affiliate KDBC-TV to one of Sinclair's partner companies, Cunningham Broadcasting, which is effectively controlled by Sinclair through a series of trusts held by family members of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith. While two Big Four network affiliates, such as KFOX-TV and KDBC-TV, would normally not be allowed to be under common direct ownership as among the top four stations in the market, KINT-TV and KTDO both rated ahead of KDBC-TV, and KFOX-TV was sixth in total-day ratings, leading to FCC approval for Sinclair to own both stations outright in a deal consummated on October 1, 2013. In 2014, Sinclair purchased and outfitted a new studio facility to house the two stations; KDBC's news had been produced from the studios of competitor KTSM-TV, and that station only had two dedicated