as many as five VHF and two additional UHF television stations. It chose to sell the Cincinnati outlet, which was in the smallest market of any in which the firm owned TV properties, and it also sold WTCN-TV in Minneapolis to finance the purchase. The buyer was Cleveland-based Malrite Communications Group. The $45 million sale was approved by the FCC in December 1983. Under Malrite, WXIX-TV continued to be the market's leading non-network station, not far behind the network stations in early evening hours and way ahead of WBTI, which had become a full-time ad-supported station again as WIII in 1985. One advertising agency president declared it had become "one of the big boys" in local television. In the early years under Malrite, the station telecast Xavier Musketeers men's basketball before picking up a multi-year deal to air University of Cincinnati basketball games in 1987. UC basketball had previously aired on the station in the Metromedia era. It joined Fox as a charter member in 1986. When Fox made a push into children's programming with the startup of the Fox Children's Network (later known as Fox Kids), WXIX started its own Fox Kids Club; within nine months, channel 19 had 80,000 members, outpacing projections of 50,000 in the first year. It also started a new weekly local children's show, Fridays Are Fun, hosted by Michael Flannery. News startup, studio move, and Raycom purchase From the Malrite purchase until his death from esophageal cancer in 1992, Bill T. Jenkins was channel 19's general manager; he also served on the first Fox affiliate association board and advised the creation of Fox Kids, and within Malrite, he was named executive vice president of its television station division, securing Fox affiliations for multiple Malrite stations. He was replaced by Stu Powell, WFLD's general manager; Stu then hired Greg Caputo, who had overseen the launch of a local newsroom at WFLD in 1987, to do the same in Cincinnati. Launching local news made the Woodlawn site, from Cincinnati on Interstate 75, a hindrance for news crews. As a result, in 1993, WXIX-TV purchased the former Harriet Beecher Stowe School building in the Queensgate neighborhood, spending $2 million at a sheriff's sale to acquire the former black junior high school which had since been converted into offices. The station converted a third of the structure for its own use, including using the former gymnasium as its