the WLOS stations. The FCC approved the transaction in August, and upon closure, several WTVJ employees moved to Asheville to help manage WLOS radio and television. In 1959, Bill Norwood, known on air as "Mr. Bill", began hosting a children's program under a range of titles (the last being Mr. Bill's Friends) which continued to air until June 1988, later returning as a fill-in weatherman in the late 1990s. Bill's sidekick was a clown named Bumbo, played by longtime WLOS weatherman Bob Caldwell. Wometco sold off WLOS AM to the Greater Asheville Broadcasting Corporation in 1969, retaining the FM and TV stations; the AM station changed its call sign to WKKE when the sale took effect. WLOS continued to share ABC programming in the western Carolinas with WAIM-TV (channel 40) in Anderson, South Carolina, on the opposite end of the market. It was a dual ABC/CBS affiliate; while WAIM-TV's ABC affiliation agreement allowed it to carry any network program not aired by WLOS in Asheville, which was not receivable in the Anderson area. This ended in January 1979; after an ownership change at channel 40, ABC only allowed the station to continue airing its programming through the end of 1978. Ownership changes In 1984, Wometco was taken private in a leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). As part of this transaction, WLOS-FM was sold to WISE and became WRLX-FM and later WKSF. KKR struggled with the station, in part because ABC sank to third in the national ratings. It set revenue goals that were so unreachable that the entire WLOS-TV sales force turned over. AnchorMedia, associated with the Robert M. Bass Group, acquired WLOS-TV for $50 million in 1987 after two attempts had been made in the preceding year to purchase the station from KKR. Anchor was a rapidly growing group in radio, having acquired stations in Dallas, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque, but WLOS-TV marked its first television station property. It also was something of a consolation prize; Anchor had also bid on WTVJ in Miami only to be outmuscled at the last minute by a bid from General Electric and NBC. During AnchorMedia's ownership, the company attempted to acquire WAXA, the former WAIM-TV, in Anderson; the company proposed to simulcast WLOS on channel 40 for the benefit of viewers in the southern portion of the market who could not receive the Asheville station. The FCC denied an outright