was thrown into that agreement in May 1994, after New World Communications signed a long-term agreement to affiliate its major network-affiliated stations with Fox, starting that September and as individual contractual agreements with the affected stations expired. Under the deal, Fox tapped longtime Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate KDFW (now a Fox owned-and-operated station) – which New World had recently acquired from Argyle Television Holdings – to switch to the network once its contract with the latter network expired in July 1995. CBS eventually approached Gaylord Broadcasting to negotiate an agreement for KTVT (the only viable option for it to retain a VHF affiliate in the Dallas–Fort Worth market); on July 22, 1994, the group asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to confirm that its Dallas, Houston and Seattle stations were not "legally obligated to 'affiliate'" with The WB, as none of the stations had signed a formal agreement even though Warner asserted that Gaylord's stations were legally bound to draft affiliation proposals for The WB. Not pleased with Gaylord's about-face, on August 18, WB majority owner Time Warner filed several lawsuits in attempts to block the Gaylord-CBS affiliation deal under breach of contract and bad faith negotiation complaints, and enforce an alleged contract with Gaylord to affiliate with The WB. CBS and Gaylord came to a deal on September 14, when the two parties signed a ten-year agreement with CBS to affiliate with KTVT and KSTW (which would replace KIRO-TV, which would later return to the network in June 1997 after a two-year run as a UPN affiliate, as the Seattle market's CBS outlet). Because of the dispute between Time Warner and Gaylord, for six months after the network launched on January 11, 1995, Houston was the only top-10 television market in the U.S. that did not have a WB charter affiliate. (Dating to the network's January 1995 launch, The WB had been available locally on Prime Cable, Phonoscope Communications, and other local cable and satellite providers through the superstation feed of Chicago affiliate and Tribune television flagship WGN-TV [now conventional basic cable channel NewsNation].) This status came to an end in the fall of 1995; on September 18, Gaylord announced it would sell KHTV to Tribune Broadcasting, the Chicago-based broadcasting subsidiary of the Tribune Company, for $95 million. Under the transactional terms, KHTV also signed an agreement to affiliate with The WB. KHTV became