announced it would acquire the assets of Chicago-based Tribune Media—which has owned Fox affiliate WTIC-TV (channel 61) since 1996 and CW affiliate WCCT-TV (channel 20) since 2001—for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. Nexstar was required to sell two of the stations (including one ranking in the top four in ratings) to a separate, unrelated company to comply with FCC ownership rules. On March 20, 2019, it was announced that Nexstar would keep the WTNH/WCTX duopoly and sell the WTIC/WCCT duopoly to McLean, Virginia-based Tegna Inc. as part of the company's sale of nineteen Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to Tegna and the E. W. Scripps Company in separate deals worth $1.32 billion; this would make the WTIC/WCCT duopoly the first television properties in Connecticut and southern New England for Tegna. News operation WTNH presently broadcasts 48 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours each weekday and 4½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays) among both WTNH and WCTX. In addition to its main studios, WTNH operates a New London bureau and a Hartford bureau on Columbus Boulevard. Along with regional NOAA National Weather Service radar data, the station operates its own weather radar near its transmitter site in Hamden. Together, these two sources are called "SkyMax Doppler Network". This can be seen via live video with audio from the National Weather Service on WTNH's website. For over a quarter century, the station used the Action News format made famous at former Philadelphia sister station WFIL-TV (which became WPVI-TV and is now an ABC O&O), using the same "Move Closer to Your World" music and graphics packages as WPVI. It rebranded as NewsChannel 8 in 1996. For most of the last half-century, WTNH has been a distant runner-up in the overall Connecticut market to dominant WFSB. However, in recent times, it has had to fend off a spirited challenge from WVIT. Since the turn of the millennium, the two stations have regularly traded the runner-up spot. However, WTNH appears to have higher ratings in southern and coastal Connecticut. Historically, WTNH's ratings for news and local programming are far higher in Nielsen's "Metro B" area of New Haven County than "Metro A" containing Hartford County. Since 2000, WTNH has been producing a nightly prime time newscast at 10:00 p.m. on WBNE/WCTX. It has competed right from the start with WTIC-TV's 10:00 p.m. broadcast, which established itself as a viewer