own both channel 25 and the Herald; News Corporation sold the newspaper to its publisher, Pat Purcell, in February 1994, clearing the way for a potential purchase of WFXT. The Celtics also moved their games off their own station, shifting the team's over-the-air broadcast rights to WSBK-TV in a five-year deal that began with the 1993–94 season; this move followed WFXT's increasing difficulty in scheduling Celtics telecasts around the Fox lineup. WFXT's Fox affiliation again came into question in 1994, in the wake of the network's affiliation deal with twelve New World Communications stations, when reports emerged that then-CBS affiliate WHDH-TV was considering a switch to Fox. After Westinghouse Broadcasting signed a deal that July to affiliate all of its stations, including WBZ-TV (channel 4), with CBS, WHDH was given the opportunity to choose between Fox and the NBC affiliation being vacated by WBZ; it elected to sign with NBC in August 1994, keeping Fox on WFXT. On October 5, 1994, Fox announced it would exercise its purchase option and buy WFXT. That November, the deal, as well as Fox's concurrent purchase of WTXF in Philadelphia, encountered objections from NBC, alleging that Fox's interest in SF Broadcasting, in connection with the Boston and Philadelphia purchases, would put Fox over the FCC's twelve-station ownership limit; NBC subsequently filed a separate petition concerning Fox's ties to the then-Australian-based News Corporation. NBC withdrew its petitions on February 17, 1995, allowing Fox to retake control of channel 25 on July 7. As the 1990s progressed, WFXT began phasing in more talk and reality programs. It continued running cartoons (including the Fox Kids block) each weekday – later becoming the last station in the market that had run a morning children's program block – and sitcoms during the evening hours. WFXT served as the television flagship of the Boston Red Sox for three seasons from 2000 to 2002 (before that and since then, WFXT only carried Red Sox games that were televised by Fox itself, including games from its four World Series victories in 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018). In the fall of 2001, WPXT (which served as the over-the-air Fox affiliate for the Portland area since the network launched) disaffiliated from Fox due to a payment dispute between Pegasus Broadcasting (the station's owner at the time) and the network. This left Portland and the entire state of Maine without a Fox affiliate until then-Pax