lead to the foundation being laid to start a new commercial television station in Greater Cincinnati. That March, Tri-City sold the WNOP-TV permit to Daniel H. Overmyer, who was seeking to build a chain of major-market UHF television stations, for $100,000. Two changes were nearly immediate after the purchase closed. On September 14, 1965, the call letters were changed to WSCO-TV; Overmyer's stations all bore the initials of family members, with the new designation representing his wife, Shirley Clark Overmyer. The FCC was in the process of overhauling the UHF table of allocations at the time, which—together with a rulemaking petition from Overmyer—resulted in the lower channel of 19 being substituted for 74 in 1966. Overmyer selected the Bald Knob tower site, negotiated to lease a studio facility on Eighth Street in the Queensgate neighborhood, and announced that the new station would be affiliated with the new Overmyer Network once it started. Civic leaders in Newport objected, to no avail, to the idea of the station leaving Northern Kentucky. A launch date of February 1, 1967, was initially slated, but the station did not start on that date. Instead, in April, Overmyer reached a deal to sell 80 percent of his television station group to the American Viscose Corporation (AVC). Startup and early years The FCC approved the purchase of the Overmyer stations by AVC (which organized its television holdings under the name U.S. Communications Corporation) in December 1967. The following May, the call letters changed one more time to WXIX-TV, representing the Roman numeral for 19; station manager Doug McLarty also cited possible confusion with WCPO-TV in changing the call sign. From the Overmyer-built transmitter facilities and a studio site within an office suite at 801 West Eighth Street in Cincinnati, WXIX-TV debuted on the afternoon of August 1, 1968. The site from which channel 19 went on air was not the one Overmyer had selected; channel 19 was then sued by that property's owners. Cincinnati's first commercial independent station featured a schedule consisting primarily of movies, sports, and syndicated programs, though it also produced a local daytime children's program hosted by puppeteer Larry Smith. The next year, the station debuted "The Cool Ghoul", a host of Scream-In, channel 19's Saturday night science fiction and horror movie played by Dick VonHoene. By the start of 1970, an American Research Bureau study had determined WXIX-TV was the number-one UHF independent