relegated from daytime to the overnight hours in November 2012, and were then cut to weekends only in late December 2013.) In KAUT's case, until the arrangement was discontinued in May 2014, the programs were simulcast from Antenna TV's national feed to compensate for current-day syndication rights. Local TV was acquired by the Tribune Company in a $2.75 billion deal completed on December 27, 2013. Sinclair purchase attempt; sale to Nexstar Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion on May 8, 2017, including the assumption of $2.7 billion in Tribune-held debt. Due to Sinclair owning KOKH and KOCB, the company agreed to divest KAUT to Howard Stirk Holdings for $750,000 but planned to maintain operational control of the station via shared services and joint sales agreements. KOKH would additionally be divested to Standard Media as part of a $441.1 million deal. These divestitures were nullified on August 9, 2018, after Tribune Media terminated the merger and filed a breach of contract lawsuit; those actions followed the FCC voting to bring the merger up for review and lead FCC commissioner Ajit Pai publicly rejecting it. After the Sinclair merger attempt collapsed, Nexstar Media Group announced their purchase of Tribune Media on December 3, 2018, in an all-cash $6.4 billion deal, including assumption of Tribune-held debt. The transaction closed on September 19, 2019. Subchannel history KAUT-DT2 KAUT-DT2 is the Court TV-affiliated second digital subchannel of KAUT-TV, broadcasting in standard definition on UHF digital channel 40.2 (or virtual channel 43.2 via PSIP). On cable, KAUT-DT2 is available on Cox Communications channel 220. On December 24, 2014, KAUT launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 43.2 as an affiliate of This TV; as such, KAUT became the first Tribune-owned television station to affiliate with the network since its purchase of the Local TV group (Tribune assumed original co-owner Weigel Broadcasting's equity share of the network in November 2013, while retaining its structure as a joint venture with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). The network had been absent from the Oklahoma City market for the three weeks preceding the subchannel's launch, as This TV's previous affiliate, KSBI, decommissioned its DT2 subchannel on December 1—following Griffin Communications' assumption of that station's operations—citing low ratings. In January 2015, KAUT-DT2 was added by Cox Communications, which carries the subchannel on digital channel 220. On October 28, 2019, coinciding with the enforcement of a predated affiliation