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.)
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.