cash and debt, but the fate of Fox's affiliation in Miami remained in question. On March 20, 2019, WSFL was agreed to be divested to Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps Company upon the consummation of the Nexstar-Tribune merger, as part of the company's sale of nineteen Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to Scripps and Tegna Inc. in separate deals worth $1.32 billion. Scripps chose to retain the CW affiliation for the market. On September 26, 2019, WSVN announced that it had renewed its Fox affiliation. Programming When WSVN became a Fox affiliate in January 1989, its programming format was quite unusual for the network's affiliates as it did not include sitcoms as part of its schedule; it ran cartoons only on weekend mornings, and aired a heavy amount of talk and court shows, some movies, and some drama series. As time went on, though, most Fox stations began relying more on talk and court shows, as well as local newscasts. Channel 7 runs only a slightly heavier amount of local news programming than other Fox stations (which have gradually increased their news outputs over the last 15 years). WSVN continues not to feature any sitcoms as part of its syndication inventory, somewhat atypical for a news-intensive Fox station. Past program preemptions and deferrals As an NBC affiliate, WCKT/WSVN aired a local newscast in place of programs that NBC had aired at noon on weekdays. It also occasionally preempted network shows that aired during the 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. timeslot (but ran at least one of these hours) and preempted an occasional prime time program. While NBC was traditionally far less tolerant of program preemptions than the other major broadcast networks, it did not mind this at first provided that the network was able to get Miami area independent stations to air whatever programs that WSVN chose not to air. In addition, NBC programs that were not broadcast by WSVN were cleared by WPTV, whose signal provides city-grade coverage of Fort Lauderdale and was available on nearly every cable provider in the area. However, in the early 1980s, WPTV was removed from some Miami area cable systems to make room for new channels due to limited headend channel capacity. Largely due to those preemptions, WCKT/WSVN was one of NBC's weaker affiliates. Though NBC continued to arrange for independent stations to air network programs that were not shown on WSVN, the network grew