an ABC affiliate: WALA (once again a sister station after multiple ownership changes), WLUK (now owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group) and KHON (now owned by Nexstar Media Group) had previously been affiliated with NBC. Because of Fox's acquisition of television rights to the National Football Conference, the switch resulted in channel 8 becoming the unofficial "home" station for the New Orleans Saints, carrying many of the team's Sunday afternoon road games. WWL-TV had aired most of the Saints' games beginning in 1970, when CBS assumed rights to the NFC upon the merger of the American Football League and the National Football League; when CBS lost the NFC broadcast rights to Fox in 1994, the Saints telecasts resided on WNOL-TV for the following two years. In addition to WVUE, the team's regular season games televised over-the-air locally are split primarily between WWL-TV (for select games televised by CBS in which the Saints play against an AFC opponent; CBS also had the rights to the Saints' lone Super Bowl), WGNO (through over-the-air rights to the NFL Network's Thursday Night Football package), WDSU (through NBC's rights to Sunday prime time and select playoff games as well as its local broadcast rights to Monday Night Football contests during occasions when a game involving the Saints is scheduled) and preseason games (which, as of 2019, are produced by Gray's sports division Raycom Sports). WVUE also gave local coverage to two Super Bowls, XXXVI and XXXI, both of which were held at the Louisiana Superdome. On November 28, 1995, one month before WVUE affiliated with Fox, Silver King Communications (operated by former Fox executive Barry Diller) announced that it would acquire Savoy Pictures; at the time of the purchase, Silver King's existing stations had mainly been affiliates of the Home Shopping Network (both Silver King and HSN were later acquired by USA Networks). The sale of WVUE and the other SF stations was approved and finalized in March 1996, with its other assets being merged into the company that November. On April 1, 1998, Silver King subsequently sold the stations to Emmis Communications for $307 million in cash and stock, as part of a sale of its major network affiliates in order to concentrate on its formerly HSN-affiliated independent stations. On May 15, 2005, Emmis Communications announced that it would sell its 16 television stations, including WVUE, in order to concentrate on its radio properties.