made WFXT the NBA team's flagship station starting with the 1990–91 season, following the expiration of its existing contract with WLVI-TV. The station also gained a radio sister station, as the Celtics also purchased WEEI (then at 590 AM, now WEZE; now at 850 AM) at the same time. The Celtics did not have the financial means to compete as a broadcaster. Nonetheless, under Celtics ownership, WFXT finally began to acquire stronger programming, becoming a serious competitor to WSBK and WLVI for the first time. In 1990, among securing the rights to several new, high-profile rerun syndication packages, WFXT managed to buy rights to The Cosby Show, reruns of which had been airing on WCVB-TV (channel 5) for the past two years. WCVB, which had lost a lot of money airing The Cosby Show in weekend blocks only, retained a small portion of the show's syndication rights for weekends and occasional airings in prime time (in the event that they chose to preempt an ABC network program). WFXT, meanwhile, began airing Cosby Show reruns on weekdays in the fall of 1990; aside from a couple of years off between 1994 and 1996, The Cosby Show would remain a staple of WFXT's schedule for well over a decade. Return to Fox ownership By 1992, WFXT was carried on many cable providers in areas of New England where there was no locally-based Fox affiliate station. Locally, however, the station was still rated in third place (though not as distant as the CBN or early Fox days), behind WSBK and WLVI. Still, for a while under the Celtics' watch, WFXT was perceived to be in danger of losing its Fox affiliation. As early as March 1993, Fox was again considering the purchase of a Boston television station, even though News Corporation still owned the Boston Herald, and entered into preliminary discussions with Boston Celtics Communications about reacquiring WFXT; the Celtics subsequently said, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that Fox had warned the company that it could pull its affiliation from the station if it were to acquire another property in the market. By this point, Fox held a 25-percent convertible interest in WFXT, and indicated it was seeking to expand this interest. That October, Fox obtained a 10-year option to repurchase the station as early as 1995, and immediately announced that it would not seek a waiver to