three of the four television stations that the company owned at the time with the network. As part of the deal, Meredith agreed to affiliate KCMO-TV (channel 5, now KCTV) with CBS, as compensation for sister station KPHO-TV in Phoenix losing its affiliation with the network to KOOL-TV. KMBC-TV subsequently signed an affiliation agreement with ABC, granting it assumption of the Kansas City affiliation rights to that network from KCMO-TV, which had carried the network since its September 1953 sign-on in a dual-affiliation arrangement (KCMO also initially carried select programs from the DuMont Television Network on a part-time basis until the network ceased operations in August 1956). Channel 9 formally switched to ABC, becoming the market's first full-time affiliate of that network, in September of that year. During the late 1950s, the station also briefly maintained an affiliation with the NTA Film Network programming service. In the winter of late 1958, Cook Paint and Varnish purchased KDRO-TV (channel 6) in Sedalia; the company subsequently changed that station's call letters to KMOS-TV on January 28, 1959. During that time, KDRO-TV had been serving the ABC affiliate for the far eastern portion of the Kansas City market as well as portions of north-central Missouri. However, the network refused to provide KDRO direct access to its programming feed in order to protect KMBC-TV, with which KDRO's signal overlapped in the western portions of the latter station's coverage area; this forced engineers at that station to have to switch to and from channel 9's broadcast signal whenever KDRO aired ABC network programming. Metromedia ownership In December 1960, Cook Paint and Varnish sold the KMBC television and radio stations, KMOS-TV and KFRM to New York City-based Metropolitan Broadcasting (later renamed Metromedia) for $9.65 million; Metropolitan subsequently spun off KMOS-TV and KFRM. In 1962, Metropolitan signed on a companion station on the radio side, KMBC-FM (99.7 FM, now KZPT); Metromedia would sell both of the KMBC radio stations to Bonneville International, the broadcasting arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in 1967 (although its former radio sisters had changed their call letters decades earlier, KMBC-TV has retained the "-TV" suffix in its legal call sign to this day). Metromedia eventually took over management of the building housing KMBC's operations in 1974, after being granted a change to the terms of its lease, although the group honored the lease signed by the Lyric Opera