was shut down, the owners of NBC station WRDU-TV (now WRDC) in Durham, North Carolina petitioned the Federal Communications Commission for help in its battle against then-CBS affiliate WTVD, which had been cherry-picking NBC programs for several years. In 1971 the FCC ruled that VHF stations in markets with three or more commercial outlets could be affiliated with only one network. This forced WTVD and, by extension, WAPI-TV (now WVTM-TV) in Birmingham to choose between one of the networks; WTVD ultimately chose CBS full-time while WAPI-TV went with NBC. Though this decision was too late to save WATU's first incarnation, a precedent was set which allowed the station to return to the airwaves. Channel 26 returned to the air in 1974 with a full NBC affiliation. As a result of that FCC decree, WATU's return forced WJBF and WRDW to drop NBC programming once and for all. Still, the station continued to struggle under the handicap of a fairly weak UHF signal. The Twisdale/Steel group sold WATU to local businessmen J. Thomas Jones and Francis Robertson, in the late 1970s. Jones and Robertson, in turn, sold the station to South Bend, Indiana–based Schurz Communications in 1980.WATU-TV/Schurz Communications advertisement. Broadcasting, August 18, 1980, pg. 39. The new owners changed the station's call letters to WAGT on July 7, 1981, and for much of the next decade, the station used the on-air branding 26 Power. Even during a very prosperous period for NBC as a whole, WAGT remained essentially the third station in a two-station market. It not only had to compete against WJBF and WRDW, but also had to contend with Columbia's WIS-TV, one of the strongest NBC affiliates in the nation. Until the arrival of cable in the market in the early 1980s, many Augusta-area viewers actually got a stronger signal from WIS, even though channel 10's transmitter was located almost from the South Carolina–Georgia line. The growing penetration of cable mitigated the signal problem somewhat. Even then, WAGT still lost many potential viewers to WIS, which remained on many area cable systems (including Augusta itself) well into the 21st century. Under Media General In October 2009, Schurz and WJBF's then-owner, Media General, announced that the two would enter into joint sales and shared services agreements in January 2010. This resulted in the two stations combining news operations, advertising sales, and other operational services, with Schurz remaining responsible for programming