consummated in May 1980. The deal was the second-most expensive single-station TV station transaction ever. To reduce debt incurred in the KOVR purchase, Outlet then sold 91 department stores. During Outlet ownership, ratings for KOVR's newscasts fell to third place, behind KXTV and far behind a dominant KCRA. This occurred despite an infusion of resources to improve KOVR's news ratings. The Outlet sale was the first in seven different ownership transactions involving KOVR between 1980 and 1996. In what was the second-largest group station deal for its time, in 1983, Outlet was purchased by the Rockefeller Group after Coca-Cola walked away from a purchase agreement the year before. After the Rockefeller purchase, KOVR became the first station in Northern California to broadcast in stereo sound, doing so in February 1985. It also became the first local broadcast home of the newly relocated Sacramento Kings basketball team in 1985. In a management buyout that restored Outlet Communications to separate status, Rockefeller Group sold the firm in 1986 for $625 million. To raise capital, some stations were immediately divested, among them KOVR, which was sold on for $104 million to another Rhode Island concern, Narragansett Capital Corporation, as its first television property. Amidst these two transactions, KOVR laid off 10 employees, and morale was low due to poor ratings in part attributable to the national underperformance of ABC at the time. The Kings had been one of the station's bright spots, but the team sued KOVR in August 1986 for breach of contract, alleging the station owed it hundreds of thousands of dollars and had tried to renegotiate the pact; it was another three years before a judge ruled in favor of the Kings. 1986 also saw the station break ground on its present transmission tower, a mast in Walnut Grove, in a joint venture with KXTV. Otherwise, Narragansett—a holding company, not a broadcasting firm—generally underinvested in KOVR; one rival broadcaster commented that the company had "stripped the station clean". AnchorMedia ownership and move to West Sacramento In 1988, Narragansett received between seven and eleven offers, all unsolicited, for KOVR, and it opted to cash out by selling the station to AnchorMedia, a broadcasting company owned by Texas billionaire Robert Bass, for $162 million—a price considered to be "top dollar". The Bass Group had been making major business investments in Sacramento, including a purchase of land in Roseville and the acquisition of