market reach allowed by any station group and clear enough room to acquire standalone UPN affiliates in four markets that Fox was in the process of acquiring from Chris-Craft Television. Although representatives at WDAF and WHBQ confirmed the sale, News Corporation stated on July 3 that it had only received an offer from Gatling and had not entered into formal sale negotiations. Fox ultimately never reached a deal with Gatling, and retained ownership of the four stations after the FCC raised the national ownership cap that restricted broadcast groups from owning television stations which reached a combined total of U.S. households from 35% to 39% following an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals issued to justify the limit. Local TV and Tribune ownership On December 22, 2007, Fox sold WDAF-TV and seven other owned-and-operated stations – WJW, WBRC, WGHP, KTVI in St. Louis, WITI in Milwaukee, KDVR in Denver and KSTU in Salt Lake City – to Local TV (a broadcast holding company operated by private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners that was formed on May 7 of that year to assume ownership of the broadcasting division of The New York Times Company) for $1.1 billion; the sale was finalized on July 14, 2008. On July 1, 2013, the Tribune Company (which in 2008, had formed a joint management agreement involving its Tribune Broadcasting subsidiary and Local TV to operate stations owned by both companies and provide web hosting, technical and engineering services to those run by the latter group) acquired the Local TV stations for $2.75 billion; the sale was completed on December 27. Aborted sale to Sinclair Broadcast Group; sale to Nexstar Media Group On May 8, 2017, Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group announced that it would acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune. If the deal received regulatory approval, WDAF-TV would have been placed under common ownership with Sinclair's existing Missouri-based stations: CBS affiliates KRCG in Jefferson City, KHQA-TV in Hannibal and KTVO in Kirksville, the Cape Girardeau duopoly of Fox affiliate KBSI and MyNetworkTV affiliate WDKA, and ABC affiliate KDNL-TV in St. Louis (which was involved in an ownership conflict with WDAF's sister duopoly of KTVI and CW affiliate KPLR-TV, which Sinclair attempted to sell to the Meredith Corporation before rescinding that deal due to KPLR and Meredith-owned CBS affiliate KMOV both falling