for $2.1 million. Nexstar planned to operate KMSS and KSHV under a shared services agreement, forming a virtual triopoly with KTAL. However, on June 6, 2014, Nexstar announced that it would instead sell KMSS-TV, along with two other Fox affiliates—sister station KPEJ-TV in Midland, Texas and KLJB/Davenport, Iowa—to Houston-based Marshall Broadcasting Group (founded by Pluria Marshall, Jr.) for $58.5 million, an agreement that marked the company's first television station acquisitions. The minority-owned Marshall intended to fund the acquisitions—which were subject to FCC approval of Nexstar's acquisition of the ComCorp and White Knight Broadcasting stations as well as its concurring purchase of Grant Broadcasting—through borrowings guaranteed by Nexstar; Marshall planned to launch news operations and provide sports and minority-oriented public affairs programming on KMSS and the other two stations (opting instead to have Nexstar-owned stations produce additional newscasts for the Marshall stations in each of the three markets), with Nexstar providing sales and certain non-programming services including engineering, master control and other administrative functions. The sale of ComCorp to Nexstar, as well as that of KMSS to Marshall and a concurring acquisition of the time brokerage agreement with KSHV, received FCC approval on December 4, 2014, and was completed on January 1, 2015. As a result, Nexstar began operating KMSS and KSHV under separate shared services agreements with Marshall and White Knight, forming a virtual triopoly with KTAL, leaving Shreveport's six major commercial stations under the control of just three broadcasting companies (the Wray family—through Wray Properties Trust—owns KTBS, while KSLA is owned by Gray Television); KMSS and KSHV subsequently migrated their operations into KTAL's North Market Street studios in northeastern Shreveport. On April 3, 2019, Marshall filed a lawsuit against Nexstar in the New York Supreme Court, accusing it of sabotaging the value of KMSS, KPEJ and KLJB for future direct acquisition under a waiver of duopoly rules (which allow groups to seek approval for duopolies involving two of a given market's four highest-rated stations), being undermined in favor of Nexstar under the terms of Marshall's financing deal with that group (which Nexstar is alleged to have threatened to withdraw), being given an $16-million overevaluation of the collective worth of the stations, and withholding retransmission fees. (Prior to the 2014 deal with Nexstar, Pluria Marshall Jr.—who is African American—had struggled to obtain financing for station purchases dating to the late 1980s, including a rebuffed 2008 offer to buy stations from