WPNT
On December 6, 2017, it was reported that Sinclair and Fox were working on a deal that would see its Fox affiliates renew their affiliation agreement in exchange for Sinclair selling some of its Fox affiliates directly to Fox Television Stations. The deal would see between six and ten Fox affiliates owned by Sinclair and Tribune (all in markets with an NFL team) become Fox owned-and-operated stations. Originally speculated that WPGH-TV may be sold to Fox while Sinclair retained WPNT, it was later reported that WPNT might be included in the deal as well in order to keep the two stations together, which would make WPNT a MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station. On May 9, 2018, Sinclair announced that seven Fox affiliates would be sold to FTS, but WPGH-TV was not included and an affiliation renewal was announced for that station instead, keeping WPGH-TV and WPNT with Sinclair.
1994 United States broadcast TV realignment
At the time of Fox's bid, some of its owned-and-operated stations (except those in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City) and most of its affiliates were UHF stations that transmitted at a lower radiated power than its VHF counterparts. Most of the stations that carried the network's programming also had little to no prior history as a major network affiliate, however, some (among them, its outlets in the former three aforementioned markets where it owned a station) were once affiliated with at least one of the Big Three networks or even the DuMont Television Network earlier in their histories. As Fox put together its new sports division to cover the NFL, it sought to affiliate with VHF stations (broadcasting on channels 2 to 13) that had more established histories, and carried more value with advertisers.