WPNT
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. Originally speculated that WPGH-TV may be sold to Fox while Sinclair retained WPNT, it was later reported that WPNT might be included in the deal as well in order to keep the two stations together, which would make WPNT a MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station. On May 9, 2018, Sinclair announced that seven Fox affiliates would be sold to FTS, but WPGH-TV was not included and an affiliation renewal was announced for that station instead, keeping WPGH-TV and WPNT with Sinclair.
Repercussions of the 1994 United States broadcast TV realignment
The repercussions of this realignment were gradual but swift, with nearly 70 stations in 30 media markets throughout the United States changing affiliations between September 1994 and September 1996. Fox ascended to the status of a major television network, comparable in influence to the Big Three television networks (CBS, NBC and ABC), while CBS was dealt the major blows of losing both its partial broadcast rights to the National Football League (NFL) and key affiliates in several major markets to Fox. All three major networks also wound up affiliating with stations that broadcast on the UHF band in a few cases, the vast majority of which operated as either Fox affiliates or independent stations prior to the switches; most of the new Big Three affiliates also created news departments from scratch or expanded their existing ones.