1987 sign-on to Niagara Frontier Hockey, the owners of the Buffalo Sabres. TVX sold WRLH-TV to the Baltimore-based A.S. Abell Company, then-publisher of the Baltimore Sun, in 1985. In mid-1986, the new Fox Broadcasting Company approached TVX with an affiliation deal for the company's New Orleans station. TVX agreed, but on the condition that Fox also took on TVX's other properties as affiliates. Fox added one stipulation: if one of TVX's underperforming stations was sold, Fox could then pull its affiliation from that station. Once the group deal for WLFL was closed, TVX had to sell WNRW-TV in Winston-Salem, due to a large signal overlap with the larger WLFL, and as a result, TVX could not keep both stations (FCC rules did not allow common-grade signal overlap, and could not gave them a waiver until 2000). TVX opted to keep the larger WLFL and sell WNRW to Act III Broadcasting, becoming the first acquisition. Integrations In February 1987, TVX acquired five stations from the Taft Broadcasting Company, which was in the middle of a corporate restructuring. The stations purchased were Fox affiliates WTAF-TV in Philadelphia and WCIX in Miami; and independent stations WDCA-TV in Washington, D.C., KTXA in Fort Worth, Texas, and KTXH in Houston. The purchase of the Taft stations, while transforming TVX's profile from a small company into a large-market broadcaster, had a major negative impact: TVX acquired massive debt as well, resulting in the company selling many of their medium- and small-market outlets. Between late 1987 and the end of 1989, TVX found new owners for eight stations, though most were to satisfy Federal Communications Commission requirements on group ownership. Notable sales were those of WNOL-TV, to a group led by musician Quincy Jones; of WTVZ, TVX's first station, to Sullivan Broadcasting; of the two Tennessee stations (WCAY-TV and WMKW-TV), which were sold to MT Communications, who also bought out WETO in the Tri-Cities region, and of WCIX, whose status as the company's only VHF outlet played a factor in TVX's reluctant sale of the station to CBS in 1988. Fox, on the other hand, exercised the clause in the 1986 group affiliation contract and pulled its programming from several former TVX stations as soon as the sales were finalized. Also during this period, company co-founder Tim McDonald departed the firm after negotiating a financial restructuring with Salomon Brothers to help resolve the company's debt issues. Salomon