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.
WFLD
On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company, owner of ABC's owned-and-operated station WLS-TV (channel 7), announced its intent to buy WFLD's parent company, 21st Century Fox, for $66.1 billion, pending regulatory approval; later on June 13, 2018, Comcast, one of the largest cable providers in Chicago and owner of NBC owned-and-operated station WMAQ-TV (channel 5) and Telemundo owned-and-operated station WSNS-TV (channel 44) announced that they had joined Disney in the bidding war to buy Fox's entertainment assets for $65 billion. In addition, the sale will exclude WFLD and sister station WPWR-TV as well as the Fox network, the MyNetworkTV programming service and the Fox Television Stations unit, which will be transferred to a separate company.