station had also, reportedly, laid off most of its employees, aside from its sales and operational staff. The move came as a result of a restructuring and a possible shift away from local programming, along with the possibility that Family Broadcasting would place the station up for sale. Indeed, a sale of KSBI was announced on September 29, 2014, when Family Broadcasting Group announced that the station would be sold to Griffin Communications (now Griffin Media), longtime owner of KWTV (which had previously submitted a bid to acquire KSBI in 2001, only to be beaten by Christian Media Group's competing offer). Griffin took over the operations of KSBI on December 1, 2014, with the station switching to a pre-recorded feed of its regular programming schedule until the company completed the move of KSBI's master control operations to KWTV's Kelley Avenue studios in northeast Oklahoma City on December 6. The station's programming lineup remained similar (with a few programs carried over from KWTV such as Extra and Dr. Phil as well as reruns of since-discontinued series from Entertainment Studios being added after Griffin took over); in addition, KSBI also began to air CBS programming in the event that extended breaking news or severe weather coverage, or special programming aired on its parent station's main channel requires KWTV to pre-empt it (taking over this responsibility from News 9 Now, a news rebroadcast subchannel on KWTV virtual channel 9.2). Unusual for a recently acquired duopoly outlet, KSBI also ceased all separate programming promotions, outside of a modified version of its final logo under Family Broadcasting ownership that was mainly used to fulfill FCC-mandated station identification requirements; all promotional content that aired on the station thereafter was in the form of news and image promos produced for KWTV, with short-form ID bumper promotions produced for that station being augmented with the KSBI logo in place of that belonging to KWTV. On March 1, 2017, KSBI began to rebrand itself under the "News 9 Plus" moniker, serving as a branding extension of KWTV, while continuing to focus largely on entertainment programming. Griffin Communications CEO David Griffin said that the rebranding of channel 52 was designed to "help create a more inclusive and consistent identity for all of our programming". The change mirrored similar rebrandings made by Fox Television Stations around this timeframe for that group's MyNetworkTV O&Os and independent stations in markets where Fox operates