owned five percent and the remainder was held by Family Group Broadcasting, a chain of independent stations based in Tampa, Florida. Family Group began fitting out studios on Colonial Avenue Southwest in the Franklin-Colonial area of Roanoke, and the call letters WVFT (for "Western Virginia Family Television") were adopted. After delays in constructing its transmitter facility, WVFT began broadcasting on November 13, 1986, as the second independent in the Roanoke–Lynchburg market. Its primary competitor was WJPR (channel 21) in Lynchburg, which had gone on the air that March. After signing on, the station was sued by WVTF, a Roanoke public radio station owned by the Virginia Tech Foundation, which feared some donors might send their contributions to WVFT instead of WVTF. A federal judge found in the television station's favor, and the suit was eventually dropped. WVFT's financial condition began to show signs of stress in late 1988, as neither independent was able to find sufficient advertising revenue and it became clear that the market was not large enough to sustain both outlets. In December, the city of Roanoke sued the station seeking nearly $47,000 in unpaid property taxes for a two-year period. The company attempted to sell WVFT along with two operating Wisconsin stations—WGBA-TV in Green Bay and WLAX in La Crosse—and a third unbuilt Wisconsin station to Krypton Broadcasting in March 1989 in a package worth $10.5 million. Krypton, which touted its large film library, proposed to drive down programming costs at channel 27 by airing many of its own titles. However, that deal never closed. The subsidiaries of Family Group that held WVFT and the Wisconsin stations filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in April 1989. This made WVFT the second television station in the market to file for bankruptcy protection within six months, having been preceded in Chapter 11 by WJPR in November 1988. Merger with WJPR On September 13 and 15, 1989, bankruptcy courts in Lynchburg and Tampa, Florida, gave NewSouth Broadcasting, a company owned by Timothy Brumlik, permission to purchase WJPR and WVFT with the intention of consolidating their programming. The deal began to fall apart on the 15th, however, when Brumlik was arrested on charges of laundering up to $12 million in Colombian drug money. Officials alleged that Brumlik's ownership of TeleOnce in Puerto Rico was a front for two important Latin American media men: Remigio Ángel González, reported to be a business