1994 NFL season, on December 18, 1993. One of the twelve television stations affiliated with either CBS, ABC or NBC that were involved in the deal was KDFW, which had been affiliated with CBS since it signed on in December 1949 and—along with CBS affiliate KTBC in Austin and ABC affiliate KTVI in St. Louis—was added to the agreement as a byproduct of New World's $717 million purchase of four stations owned by Argyle Television Holdings on May 26. With thirteen months left until CBS's contract with KDFW—which, as a result of the agreement with New World, would replace existing owned-and-operated station KDAF (channel 33, now a CW affiliate) as the market's Fox station, resulting in Fox Television Stations selling KDAF to Renaissance Broadcasting—was set to expire on July 1, 1995, KXAS was the first station that the network had approached to become its new Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate. LIN Broadcasting turned down the offer, in favor of signing a long-term deal that renewed its affiliation agreements with KXAS and NBC-affiliated sisters KXAN-TV in Austin, WAVY-TV in Norfolk and WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids; however as WFAA was already under contract with ABC through a multi-station agreement with Belo, this later prompted CBS to sign a deal with KTVT through an agreement it signed with Gaylord Broadcasting on September 14, 1994, in exchange for also switching its sister independent station in Tacoma, Washington, KSTW (now a CW owned-and-operated station), to the network. To this day, KXAS-TV remains the only station in the market to never change its primary affiliation. In June of that year, following the $12.6-billion acquisition of majority owner McCaw Cellular Communications (which acquired a 52% interest in LIN in 1990 for $3.4 billion) by the AT&T Corporation in 1994, LIN Broadcasting announced that it would spin off seven of its eight television stations (including KXAS-TV) into a separate publicly traded corporate entity, the LIN Television Corporation. The following year in 1995, KXAS became the first commercial television station in Texas to launch a website, which provided news reports and information on the station's community initiatives and on-air staff members; the station expanded its Internet offerings in 1997, when it became the first television station in the Southwestern United States to deliver news alerts via e-mail. In 1997, KXAS became the first television station in the Dallas–Fort Worth market to commit to launching a digital television signal; the station aired