Scripps-Howard Broadcasting purchased the station; Fox and KPHO could not agree on a time slot for The Late Show. Landing the Fox affiliation made KNXV a very strong competitor against KPHO. As the station attempted to move into a new era, another ended: The Wallace and Ladmo Show aired its last episode on December 29, 1989, when Wallace retired. By 1991, with KNXV and 1985 startup KUTP cutting into channel 5's ratings alongside the rise of cable TV and the VCR, Barbara Holsopple, media writer for the Phoenix Gazette, declared that KPHO was "fighting for its life". Early in 1994, Meredith verbally agreed to affiliate KPHO with The WB, which was set to launch the following year in January 1995, though the affiliation was never solidified in a written contract. Returning to CBS On May 23, 1994, New World Communications signed an agreement with Fox to convert twelve of its stations to the network, resulting in a massive wave of affiliation switches throughout the country; locally, KSAZ-TV—which New World was in the process of acquiring from Citicasters—was included in the deal. A month later, seeking to head off what would have been a disastrous outcome for the network, ABC renewed its affiliation agreement with the Scripps-owned ABC affiliates in Detroit and Cleveland and moved to Scripps stations in Tampa, Baltimore and Phoenix; Scripps successfully pressured ABC, which wanted to remain with top-rated KTVK, to move over. CBS now had two choices: KTVK and KPHO-TV. While the former was higher-rated, the latter had several strategic advantages relating to Meredith's ownership of other stations. It owned KCTV in Kansas City, Missouri, a longtime CBS affiliate in a market where the NBC affiliation had become available, and it owned WNEM-TV in Bay City, Michigan, an NBC affiliate whose signal covered the outer fringes of Detroit—a market where the network would take a major affiliate downgrade. On June 30, 1994, CBS announced it had affiliated with KPHO-TV and WNEM-TV; Tony Malara, the head of CBS affiliate relations, noted that the Meredith–CBS partnership was a factor in the decision and denied that it had been pressured by threats from Meredith to change network affiliations in Kansas City. (It was not the first time CBS had looked at channel 5; it had attempted to negotiate a purchase of the station from Meredith in 1988, though the two parties could not agree on a purchase price.) CBS