WUTV
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. It is not known if WUTV will be one of the stations sold, although the stations being sold to Fox are expected to be from Tribune Media (notably KCPQ in Seattle, where Sinclair already owns KOMO-TV), many of which were previously owned by Fox. A sale to Fox would make WUTV Buffalo's first Big Four network O&O since WBUF-TV (channel 17, now PBS member WNED-TV), which was owned by NBC from 1955 until its sign-off in 1958. On May 9, 2018, Sinclair announced that seven Fox affiliates would be sold to FTS, but WUTV was not included and an affiliation renewal was announced for that station instead, keeping WUTV with Sinclair.
Repercussions of the 1994 United States broadcast TV realignment
KYW-TV's switch to CBS prompted an additional swap between CBS and NBC, involving KYW and WCAU-TV (channel 10) in Philadelphia – which CBS had owned since 1958 – resulting in switches in three other markets. At one point, New World had considered buying WCAU, which would have resulted in that station becoming a Fox affiliate (and therefore would have allowed it to continue airing Philadelphia Eagles games, which it had done since 1950). Additionally, in August 1993, Fox announced that it would purchase independent station WGBS-TV (channel 57) from Combined Broadcasting, which would have resulted in the network's Philadelphia affiliation being taken away from Paramount Stations Group-owned WTXF-TV (channel 29). That October, Paramount announced that WTXF would disaffiliate from Fox and become a charter affiliate of the United Paramount Network (UPN) upon that network's launch on January 16, 1995. Fox later chose to instead bid for WTXF in the event that New World did not purchase WCAU, and eventually purchased it outright; Paramount purchased WGBS (assigning it new call letters, WPSG) and made that station Philadelphia's UPN charter outlet.