partner with Manuel Noriega in a Panamanian television station, and Julio Vera Gutiérrez, a Peruvian citizen. The indictment scrambled the picture for the stations Brumlik sought to buy. At the time of his arrest, he had been approved by bankruptcy courts or the FCC to buy WJPR and WVFT; WKCH-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee; and the then-unbuilt WGNM in Macon, Georgia. With regard to WJPR and WVFT, his arrest and indictment caused him to be unable to fulfill commitments required by the bankruptcy courts. Instead, Henry A. Ash, a Tampa life insurance broker, bid on both stations with the same goal: to combine them. Ash's Roanoke–Lynchburg TV Acquisition Corporation—with WJPR majority owner Carney as a stockholder—received court approval to buy both stations, paying $2.95 million for WJPR and $1.25 million for WVFT, in February 1990. It then filed with the FCC for a waiver of its rule that prohibited ownership of stations with overlapping signal coverage areas, believing that the market could bear one independent station but not two. On August 20, 1990, with the purchases pending at the FCC, WVFT began simulcasting WJPR, expanding Fox network coverage to the market's western portions for the first time. FCC approval followed the next month. Key in winning approval was the fact that adding channel 27 to channel 21 provided Fox service to an additional 213,000 people; the commission found it unlikely that the stations could exist separately given their financial problems and local terrain. Grant ownership On September 15, 1993, WVFT and WJPR were purchased by Grant Communications, owned by UHF television pioneer Milton Grant. The sale to Grant came after Carney and Ash opted to split their interests in Roanoke–Lynchburg TV Acquisition Corporation. In October 1993, WVFT had its call letters changed to WFXR-TV. Grant also upgraded the station's equipment, and the Fox network itself matured during the first years of Grant ownership. WJPR–WFXR became a secondary affiliate of The WB in 1999, when the network ceased airing its programming on Superstation WGN nationally. Programs aired in overnight hours until February 1, 2001, when WJPR/WFXR launched a cable-only WB affiliate known as "WBVA-TV" and seen on Cox Communications channel 5. It was also announced at that time that "WBVA" would become a full-power service on channel 21 in May 2001, though instead it was broadcast as a subchannel from the WJPR transmitter beginning in April 2002. In 2006, when The WB