General Tire in non-broadcast fields. The primary basis for revocation, however, was RKO's dishonesty before the FCC. In the course of the WNAC hearings, RKO had withheld evidence of General Tire's misconduct, including the fact that the SEC had begun an investigation of the company in 1976. RKO also denied that it had improperly reported exchanges of broadcast time for various services, despite indications to the contrary in General Tire's 1976 annual report. The FCC consequently found that RKO had displayed a "persistent lack of candor" regarding its own and General Tire's misdeeds, thus threatening "the integrity of the Commission's processes." The FCC ruling meant that RKO lost the KHJ-TV and WOR-TV licenses as well. RKO appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The court upheld the revocation solely on the basis of RKO's lack of candor, writing in its opinion that "[t]he record presented to this court shows irrefutably that the licensee was playing the dodger to serious charges involving it and its parent company." However, the court interpreted the candor issue so narrowly that it applied only to WNAC-TV, and ordered rehearings for the WOR-TV and KHJ-TV licenses. RKO again appealed, this time to the United States Supreme Court. On April 19, 1982, the Supreme Court refused to review the license revocation; RKO had lost the case for good. As a result of the decision, RKO sold WNAC-TV's assets to New England Television (NETV), a new company resulting from the merger of Community Broadcasting and another competitor for the license, the Dudley Station Corporation. As part of the settlement, the FCC granted a full license to NETV, which renamed the Boston station WNEV-TV. The station has since changed its call letters to WHDH-TV (not to be confused with Boston's original Channel 5 that used the same call letters). Endgame In February 1983, the FCC began a concerted effort to force RKO out of broadcasting once and for all, taking competing applications for all of the company's broadcasting licenses. However, RKO got a partial, and temporary, reprieve when Congress passed a law requiring the FCC to automatically renew the license of any commercial VHF television station relocating to a state without one, “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” The only states qualifying at the time were Delaware and New Jersey, where no commercial VHF outlet had been licensed since 1962. On