Channel 13 at Mount Vernon—the last VHF television allocation in southern Illinois, added in 1970 after a years-long fight that depleted the resources of the aspiring station owners—emerged as a bone of contention when the Southern Illinois Broadcasting Corporation, a subsidiary of Evans Broadcasting, was granted a construction permit in 1979. Southern Illinois Broadcasting had been one of three competing applicants for the channel, alongside a group of local businessmen and Bill Varecha, owner of Murphysboro radio station WTAO, under the name Pyramid Broadcasting Corporation. Evans fueled a prolonged legal fight that prompted Varecha to reach a settlement agreement. However, opposition arose because Evans Broadcasting owned St. Louis independent station KDNL-TV and intended for channel 13 to repeat it 95 percent of the time. A local landowner who owned a strategically located parcel that Evans considered for the transmitter refused to lease it. The landowner and others formed the Citizens Committee for Independent Local Television in Southern Illinois to oppose the grant of the permit. Evans argued that Mount Vernon, a town with a population of 18,000, could not sustain the station, and that national advertising revenues would be poor since the station would be located in the St. Louis market without covering St. Louis.