affiliation agreement with Fox to switch thirteen television stations – five that New World had already owned and eight that the company was in the process of acquiring through separate deals with Great American and Argyle Television Holdings (which New World purchased one week later in a purchase option-structured deal for $717 million), including WDAF – to the network. The stations involved in the agreement – all of which were affiliated with one of the three major broadcast networks (CBS, ABC and NBC) – would become Fox affiliates once individual affiliation contracts with each of the stations' existing network partners had expired. The deal was motivated by the National Football League (NFL)'s awarding of the rights to the National Football Conference (NFC) television package to Fox on December 18, 1993, in which the conference's broadcast television rights moved to the network effective with the 1994 NFL season, ending a 38-year relationship with CBS. At the time the agreement was signed, the affiliation contracts of WDAF-TV and CBS affiliate WJW-TV in Cleveland were up for renewal as they were set to expire on or shortly after September 1, 1994. The timing of New World's purchase of channel 4 and the signing of its affiliation deal with Fox automatically gave NBC only a five-month span until the conclusion of its contract with the station to find another outlet to replace WDAF-TV as its Kansas City affiliate (by comparison, depending on the station, the existing affiliation contracts of most of the other New World stations that were slated to join Fox were not due to expire until as early as December 1994 to as late as September 1996, giving NBC, ABC and CBS more time to find a replacement affiliate). The network entered into negotiations with other area stations in the immediate weeks after the Fox-New World deal was announced, as the projected date of WDAF's switch to Fox was now fast approaching. NBC first entered into discussions with KCTV for a contract; this concerned CBS, as New World planned to switch several of the network's stronger-performing affiliates in other markets to Fox, which often forced CBS to affiliate with either a former Fox affiliate or a lower-profile independent station, as many of the Big Three stations and – with the exception of Dallas–Fort Worth and Phoenix – some higher-rated independents it approached rejected offers to join CBS due to its faltering ratings