Fox affiliate (most virtual or legal duopolies involving a Fox affiliate and a Big Three-affiliated station result in the Fox affiliate serving as the junior partner). A retransmission dispute forced Time Warner Cable systems to replace WVNY with future sister station WUTR from Utica, New York, on December 16, 2010. At the same time, WFFF-TV was replaced by WNYF-CD from Watertown. Both stations returned to the lineup on January 8, 2011. Mission/Nexstar era Lambert Broadcasting agreed to sell WVNY to Mission Broadcasting on November 5, 2012. Concurrently, Smith Media sold WFFF-TV to Nexstar Broadcasting Group, which operates all of Mission's stations through shared services agreements. On January 14, 2013, the FCC approved the sale of WVNY. The transaction was completed on March 1. At the sale's closure, Utica NBC affiliate WKTV was left as Smith Media's only remaining television station property until its sale to Heartland Media was consummated in 2014. On January 27, 2016, it was announced that Nexstar would buy Media General for $4.6 billion. WVNY and WFFF became part of "Nexstar Media Group", joining a cluster of television stations Nexstar owns in New England, including fellow ABC affiliate WTNH in New Haven, Connecticut, CBS affiliate WPRI-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, and NBC affiliate WWLP in Springfield, Massachusetts. In addition, WVNY and WFFF also became sisters with fellow ABC and Fox affiliates WTEN and WXXA-TV, respectively, in Albany, New York. These stations also serve Bennington County, Vermont, making Nexstar responsible for ABC and Fox programming in 13 of the 14 counties in Vermont. The lone exception, Windham County, is served by Boston's WCVB-TV and WFXT, respectively (ABC programming in Windham County is also available through Manchester, New Hampshire's WMUR-TV). On June 15, 2016, Nexstar announced that it has entered into an affiliation agreement with Katz Broadcasting for the Escape, Laff, Grit, and Bounce TV networks (the last one of which is owned by Bounce Media LLC, whose COO Jonathan Katz is president/CEO of Katz Broadcasting), bringing one or more of the four networks to 81 stations owned and/or operated by Nexstar, including WVNY and WFFF-TV. Programming Syndicated programming Syndicated programming on WVNY includes Judge Judy and The People's Court among others. News operation Since the 1980s, WVNY has made attempts at operating a local news department and airing newscasts but none of them ever made any headway in Nielsen ratings against WCAX-TV and NBC affiliate WPTZ; both were