buyer, revealed in an October 2020 FCC filing to be Inyo Broadcast Holdings, has promised to maintain the stations' Ion Television affiliations after the purchase. However, the number of stations to be sold increased according to a Public Applications Report from the FCC on October 16, 2020, and although unconfirmed, it is possible that Scripps could still operates at least some of these stations. Whether or not that pans out remains to be seen. As of October 17, 2020, 27 stations are likely up for sale; however, three of those stations in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis are predicated and contingent upon whether Scripps can complete its sale of New York City's WPIX to Mission Broadcasting (to be operated by Nexstar Media Group) in time before these transactions are finalized. If WPIX was sold before these transactions, then those stations will be retained. On October 20, broadcast industry website TV News Check confirmed the pending sales in a "station roundup" report outlining the stations slated to be sold, and the number being reduced to 26 again. That number, again, is cut down to 23, after Scripps was able to complete its sale of WPIX to Mission Broadcasting on December 30, 2020. As such, Scripps would keep its Ion stations in San Francisco, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. The transaction, which closed on January 7, 2021, saw Ion Television, Ion Plus, and Qubo integrated into Scripps' Katz Broadcasting subsidiary (operator of fellow multicast networks Court TV, Ion Mystery, Bounce TV, Laff and Grit). On January 14, 2021, Scripps announced that it would discontinue Ion Plus and Qubo effective February 28, 2021. The spectrum allocated to the networks on the former Ion Media stations will be repurposed to carry the Katz-owned networks starting March 1, with the initial slate of Ion Television O&Os adding those networks following the expiration of Scripps/Katz's existing contracts with other broadcasting companies the day prior, and other stations following suit as contracts with existing affiliates expire throughout 2021 and 2022; in markets where major network affiliates operated by Scripps already carry a Katz-owned network, some will be offloaded to the Ion stations to free up limited spectrum capacity during the ATSC 3.0 transition. Several of the Ion Plus full-power stations paired with Ion Television stations were also concurrently sold off to Inyo Broadcast Holdings in order to alleviate local ownership conflicts and national cap issues related to Scripps' purchase