Fox's NFL rights ownership made the network a major player in American television by giving it many new viewers (and affiliates) and a platform to advertise its other shows. In the meantime, CBS lost several affiliates, and ratings for its other programming languished. In spring 1994, Fox's parent News Corporation struck an alliance with New World Communications, by now a key ownership group with several VHF CBS affiliates in NFC markets, and wary of a CBS without football. Nearly all of New World's stations converted en masse to Fox beginning that fall. To this day, CBS admits that they have never recovered from the loss of affiliates, having never recovered from damage in Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee, where they were dropped to lower-powered affiliates unable to be received in some markets. (Because of satellite television, the NFL Sunday Ticket in local markets, and rules of the time, satellite subscribers were required to use antennas to pick up local affiliates.) CBS later purchased the newer CBS affiliate in Detroit, WWJ-TV. The ratings impact in the three markets where CBS was relegated to lesser-profile stations was significant; the former CBS affiliates were all considered to be ratings contenders, especially during the NFL season. With CBS having been relegated to the UHF dial on stations that had virtually no significant history as a former Fox or first-tier independent station (or former Big Three affiliate for that matter), ratings for CBS programming in these markets dropped significantly. At one point, in Milwaukee and Detroit, CBS was threatening to have to import the signals of nearby affiliates via cable as a result of its difficulty finding a new affiliate to replace WITI and WJBK, respectively. In Milwaukee, for instance, the affiliation switches there resulted in several of CBS' remaining sports properties, most notably the Daytona 500, not being carried over some southeastern Wisconsin systems in 1995 until carriage contracts for WDJT were signed.