WSVN's news operation, which focused on visually intensive, fast-paced newscasts with heavy emphasis on tabloid journalism, particularly covering crime (WSVN—which was an NBC affiliate from its 1956 sign-on until it joined Fox in 1989—adopted the format developed by Cheatwood in order to buoy viewership for its newscasts, which like WHDH, had languished in third place for several years). Cheatwood planned to perform similar changes at WHDH. Cheatwood ultimately adopted a considerably watered-down version of WSVN's format (see below), but still retained many of WSVN's features, including a faster-paced format, increased use of graphics and visuals, and more on-the-scene reporting. It even adopted WSVN's version of the Circle 7 logo. While critics were concerned that WHDH would lose even more viewers if it were to adopt WSVN's format entirely, WHDH quickly rebounded to become the number one newscast in Boston for a period. As an NBC affiliate (1995–2017) In 1994, WBZ-TV's owner, Westinghouse Broadcasting entered into a groupwide affiliation deal with CBS, which resulted in three Group W stations that were affiliated with networks other than CBS—NBC affiliates WBZ-TV, and KYW-TV in Philadelphia, and ABC affiliate WJZ-TV in Baltimore—switching to the network. Fox, already associated with Sunbeam through its affiliation with WSVN, considered an affiliation deal with WHDH (even before the Group W announcement, channel 7 had reportedly been considering dropping CBS for Fox); however, on August 2, 1994, WHDH-TV announced that it had agreed to affiliate with NBC instead of Fox, in part citing NBC's stronger news and sports programming. Fox ultimately chose to acquire its existing affiliate, WFXT (channel 25). WHDH became Boston's NBC affiliate on January 2, 1995, replacing WBZ-TV (which had been with the network for 46 years). The final CBS program to air on channel 7 was the made-for-TV movie A Father for Charlie at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time on January 1. During its time with NBC, channel 7 cleared the network's entire programming schedule (an exception was the network's early morning newscast at the time of the switch, NBC News at Sunrise, which ended on September 6, 1999; its successor, Early Today, was carried by WHDH for the remainder of its NBC affiliation). Between 1996 and 1997, WHDH produced a mid-morning weekday newsmagazine for the NBC network called Real Life. After the switch to NBC, WHDH became one of the few stations in the country to have had a primary affiliation with all of the