 However, most of the twelve stations involved in the New World-Fox deal chose not to carry Fox's children's programming block, Fox Kids, which resulted in Fox deciding to allow its owned-and-operated stations and affiliates to drop the block if another local station was interested in airing it.A complication of this was that religious-secular independent KNLC (channel 24, now a MeTV affiliate) in St. Louis, owned by the New Life Christian Church, chose to air ministry messages (dealing with controversial topics such as abortion, same-sex marriage and the death penalty) instead of commercials during the block's program breaks, resulting in Fox moving the block to KTVI in September 1996.Many of the new Big Three UHF affiliates found difficulty gaining an audience, and all but two of them had to give in to launching newscasts to back up the national news programs provided by the networks.