to NBC during the 1994 United States broadcast TV realignment when its Group W arm was looking for a group affiliation deal. In the event that WPGH-TV loses its Fox affiliation, the station may return to independent status. The chances of WPGH-TV keeping its Fox affiliation increased in October 2017 when Ion elected its stations to have must-carry status instead of retransmission consent, which the FCC ruled Ion must keep for three years. However, must-carry only applies to a main signal, allowing Fox to possibly affiliate with a digital subchannel on WINP-TV and other Ion stations. 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 WPGH-TV 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 WPGH-TV the third O&O station in the Pittsburgh market alongside KDKA-TV and WPCW. It was later reported that sister station WPNT might be included in the deal as well. 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. Programming Syndicated programming Syndicated programming on WPGH-TV includes The Steve Wilkos Show, Jerry Springer, and Maury among others. News operation Under Meredith ownership, WPGH-TV aired locally produced newscasts anchored by Tom Peterson, Mavis Logan, Tim Sohier and others, with varying degrees of success. One such show, Good Day Pittsburgh, aired with a similar format to that of contemporary show Pittsburgh 2Day on KDKA-TV. Some of the staff were alumni of WYTV in nearby Youngstown, Ohio. The newscasts would remain in some form until Sinclair acquired the station and eliminated the news department. Under Sinclair ownership, WPGH-TV established a news department on January 28, 1997, with the debut of a nightly prime time newscast called the Fox 53 Ten O'Clock News. This program