By the mid-1990s, WSOC-TV had a problem. It owned the rights to a large amount of syndicated programming, but increased local news commitments left it without enough time in its broadcast day to air it all. In 1996, it found a solution in the form of a joint sales agreement with independent station WKAY-TV (channel 64). As part of the deal, WKAY moved its operations to WSOC-TV's studios and changed its call letters to WAXN-TV. Under the JSA, much of channel 9's inventory of syndicated programming was acquired by WAXN. One of those programs was "The Andy Griffith Show"; it had been a mainstay on channel 9 for decades on weekday afternoons at 5 p.m. before being bumped in favor of a 5 p.m. newscast. Cox purchased WAXN outright for $3 million in 1999, shortly after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reversed its long-standing ban on television station duopolies; the sale was officially approved by the FCC in 2000. WSOC-TV served as the Charlotte "Love Network" affiliate of the "Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon" from 1974 to 2001; the program moved to WAXN thereafter, before returning to WSOC in 2013 (by this point, known as the "MDA Show of Strength") after the program abandoned its syndicated long-form telethon format and became a shortened two-hour network telecast on ABC; the telecast was discontinued after 2014.