WZTV
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 have seen between six and ten Fox affiliates owned by Sinclair and Tribune (all in markets with an NFL team) become Fox owned-and-operated stations. It was not known if WZTV will be one of the stations sold, although the stations being sold to Fox were expected to be from Tribune Media (notably KCPQ in Seattle, where Sinclair already owns KOMO-TV), many of which were previously owned by Fox. On May 9, 2018, Sinclair announced that seven Fox affiliates would be sold to FTS, but WZTV was not included and an affiliation renewal was announced for that station instead, keeping WZTV with Sinclair.
Fourth television network
By 1985, there were 267 independent television stations operational in the U.S., most of which were broadcasting on UHF. In May 1985, News Corporation paid $1.55 billion to acquire six independent stations in major U.S. cities from Metromedia, then-owned by John Kluge. In October 1985, 20th Century Fox (which News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch purchased the previous year) announced its intentions to form an independent television system, to be named the Fox Broadcasting Company, which would compete with the three major television networks. 20th Century Fox's television division would partner with the former Metromedia stations to both produce and distribute programming. Because Metromedia was a company descended from the DuMont Television Network, radio personality Clarke Ingram has argued that Fox was essentially not a new fourth network per se, but DuMont "rising from the ashes". Former DuMont stations like WNYW in New York City and WTTG in Washington, D.C. became charter affiliates of the new network. Fox debuted on October 6, 1986, with 88 affiliates, many of them UHF stations; the network started with only a single program, "The Late Show," a late-night talk show hosted by Joan Rivers, which attempted (and mightily struggled) to compete against NBC stalwart "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." Fox expanded into prime time in two phases over the course of three months starting in April 1987, running two hours of programming per night on Saturdays and Sundays.