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.)
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.