network in the New World switches. The other two local stations—CBS affiliate KCTV, owned by Meredith Corporation, and Hearst-owned and ABC-affiliated KMBC-TV—each resigned with their respective networks. In the case of the former, Meredith stood ready to flip KCTV to NBC if CBS bypassed its Phoenix TV station, KPHO-TV, in a market where CBS was the displaced network. In late July, Scripps signed an affiliation agreement with NBC. The switch was set for September 12, 1994, kickstarting a frantic month of changes in programming and personnel at KSHB-TV and WDAF-TV. A newsroom that had 18 employees had to grow to more than 70 in order to begin the production of early evening newscasts by the end of 1994. Plans were also floated to construct an addition to the Oak Street studio, which was approved in 1996. Dozens of syndicated programs were displaced in the market, particularly at KSHB-TV, which had to make room for NBC's larger program schedule; Fox Kids programs were not picked up by WDAF-TV and instead went to KSMO-TV. A.M. Live also ended its twelve-year run on the air. On the first day of the switch, Willard Scott broadcast the weather for The Today Show from the front lawn of the studios; later that week, Tom Brokaw anchored the NBC Nightly News from Kansas City. In April 1996, Scripps-Howard Broadcasting took over the operations of KMCI (channel 38) in Lawrence, Kansas, under a local marketing agreement with then-owner Miller Television; that August, the station dropped its home shopping programming and relaunched as "38 Family Greats", in part utilizing programming to which channel 41 had held the rights but had not been able to air since the 1994 affiliation switch. Exercising an option from the 1996 pact with Miller, Scripps bought KMCI outright for $14.6 million in 2000, forming a legal duopoly with KSHB. In July 2003, KSHB and KMCI relocated their transmitter facilities to an tower at the Blue River Greenway in the Hillcrest section of southern Kansas City. KSHB-TV was the primary NBC affiliate for St. Joseph—within range of its transmitter but defined as a separate media market—from 1994 until 2016, when KNPG-LD (channel 21) was relaunched as an NBC affiliate and displaced KSHB-TV from local satellite TV packages. Suddenlink Communications, the primary cable provider in St. Joseph, then removed KSHB-TV from its lineup in 2017. A jury found in 2019 that KSHB-TV retaliated against former