At that time, Channel 5 became the third English language network-owned commercial station in the Atlanta market (Viacom, then-owner of UPN's Atlanta station WUPA, had acquired part-ownership of that network in 1996). It was also one of two stations that switched to Fox under the New World agreement that replaced an existing Fox O&O, only to later be sold to the network itself (in Dallas–Fort Worth, sister station KDFW-TV had replaced KDAF as that market's Fox station in July 1995), making Atlanta one of a handful of markets more than one station has served as an O&O of the same network. In November 1996, two months before the completion of the Fox–New World merger and at a time when other network-owned stations around the United States began adopting similar network-driven branding, WAGA-TV shortened its branding to simply ""Fox 5 Atlanta"" per the network's branding guidelines (with its newscasts concurrently rebranding as "Fox 5 Eyewitness News", later shortened to "Fox 5 News" in August 1998).