13 was sold once again. This time, it joined Spartan Communications of Spartanburg, South Carolina as the construction of new transmission equipment got underway. The company completed the acquisition on April 12, 1990. On August 6 of that same year, WMBB began broadcasting from a new state-of-the-art antenna and transmitter tower now in Youngstown. This allowed for better viewing of the station in the western half of the market including the rapidly growing southern Walton County area and Destin. In 1993, WMBB became one of several ABC affiliates across the country that refused clearance to the ABC show NYPD Blue. Instead, it aired syndicated programming during the timeslot. Then-general manager Hugh Roche kept the show off the station until 1997 when the parental rating system was adopted by the networks. By the time WMBB finally allowed the program to air, it was the last station in the country to lift its ban on the show. In March 2000, this station became one of 13 in a package acquired by Media General worth $605 million. Later that year, Media General purchased the Jackson County Floridan newspaper. WMBB then established a Jackson County Bureau and used the resources of the Floridan to cover Jackson County as well. This caught the eye of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) because of the common ownership of a newspaper and television station in the same market. With the sale of WMBB to Hoak Media, the issue became moot. By the time Media General sold the station, Media General was granted a permanent waiver by the FCC to operate both properties in the same market. Media General later divested all of their newspapers (with the exception of the Tampa Tribune) to Warren Buffett's World Media Holdings in June 2012. On March 14, 2008, it was announced that Media General would sell the station (and then-sister KALB-TV in Alexandria, Louisiana) to Hoak Media. The deal was closed on July 16. At the time of the closing, WMBB was Hoak's only television station east of the Mississippi River. In July 2010, the station replaced its second digital subchannel broadcast of weather radar with This TV. That network originally aired on WBIF after that channel stopped airing content from the Retro Television Network (RTV). Its replacement was supposed to be WPGX-DT2 but this never made it to air. On November 20, 2013, Hoak announced the sale of most of its