WXIN
On December 6, 2017, reports stated that Sinclair and Fox were working on a deal that would see most of the Fox-affiliated stations whose affiliation contracts were set to expire at the end of the year renew said agreements, in exchange for Sinclair selling some Fox affiliates involved in the Tribune deal or already under the group's ownership directly to Fox Television Stations. The deal would see between six and ten Fox affiliates owned by Sinclair and Tribune in markets with an NFL franchise become Fox owned-and-operated stations. It is not known if WXIN will be one of the stations sold nor how the deal could be brokered with regards to its duopoly with WTTV/WTTK, although the stations being sold to Fox are expected to largely come from Tribune Media (notably KCPQ and its MyNetworkTV-affiliated sister KZJO in Seattle, where Sinclair already owns ABC affiliate KOMO-TV and Univision affiliate KUNS-TV), many of which were previously owned by Fox. (Sinclair may sell additional Fox affiliates to other groups not associated with the company to both address the aforementioned issues and the ownership conflicts that Sinclair and Tribune have in ten markets that largely would be excluded from the side deal with Fox.)
SF Broadcasting
All of the stations acquired by SF Broadcasting had been affiliated with NBC, with the exception of WVUE, which was affiliated with ABC. As a result of Fox's interest in the stations, all four switched their affiliations to Fox; around this time, in the wake of the network's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football Conference television package from the National Football League, Fox sought to upgrade its affiliates in major markets with an NFC franchise. The affiliation deal that resulted from the purchase gave Fox upgrades for the home markets of the Green Bay Packers (in the home market of WLUK) and the New Orleans Saints (in the home market of WVUE), giving Fox VHF affiliates in eleven of the fifteen markets with a team in the NFC. The purchase was challenged by NBC, which filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on September 23, 1994, alleging that News Corporation had improperly set up a shell corporation to circumvent FCC limits on the amount of capital that a foreign company is allowed to invest in an American television station in order to gain control of the network's Green Bay affiliate WLUK. NBC withdrew its petition against the SF Broadcasting acquisition on February 17, 1995.