to Sinclair; sale to Nexstar Sinclair Broadcast Group, which in the Washington market owns WJLA-TV, entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media on May 8, 2017, for $3.9 billion (equivalent to $ in ), plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in Tribune debt. Though it otherwise faced no regulatory issues involving the stations in the Washington television market itself, the deal received significant government scrutiny over Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties, prompting the FCC to designate it for hearing and leading Tribune to terminate the deal and sue Sinclair for breach of contract. Following the Sinclair deal's collapse, Nexstar Media Group of Irving, Texas, announced its purchase of Tribune Media on December 3, 2018, for $6.4 billion (equivalent to $ in ) in cash and debt. The sale was completed on September 19, 2019. In the Washington, D.C., market, the Nexstar purchase united WDCW with WDVM-TV (channel 25) in Hagerstown, Maryland, a former NBC affiliate for Hagerstown which had been converted into an independent station that specialized in hyperlocal news programs for specific areas of the Washington media market. In February 2020, the two stations' staffs were merged under common management by Nexstar. DC News Now On May 25, 2022, Nexstar announced that it would combine the operations of WDVM-TV and WDCW at the latter's Washington facility, where it had signed for an additional of office space the year before, and move the production of WDVM-TV's newscasts there. Under the banner of DC News Now, the stations' combined and expanded news service would retain the existing WDVM-TV regional newscasts, with bureaus in Hagerstown; Frederick, Maryland; and Chantilly, Virginia. As part of the expansion, a 10 p.m. newscast would be started for air on WDCW. DC News Now launched on July 11, 2022, over both stations with minimal publicity, debuting its first marketing campaign in early October. While an expansion for WDVM's existing news operation (with the bulk of newscasts using said brand on that station), it was treated as a de facto startup, with news director Ben Dobson hiring all of the operation's 80 additional staffers, many of whom were newcomers to the market. Technical information Subchannels The station's digital signal is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion and broadcast spectrum repack WDCW stopped transmitting on its analog signal, over UHF channel 50, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the