would drop KPTV (channel 12), Oregon's oldest television station, and move to KATU on March 1, 1964. The news led to speculation that the ABC switch to KATU, in spite of KPTV performance comparable to that of other ABC affiliates, was a countermove by the network to avoid losing Seattle's KOMO-TV, one of the network's few top-rated stations at the time, to a possible move by CBS. KPTV—which had been ABC's Portland affiliate since 1959—sued, alleging that Fisher coerced ABC into affiliating with KATU by threatening to defect in Seattle. (It was the second time KPTV had lost an affiliation to a group owner in five years; King Broadcasting Company's KGW-TV displaced KPTV as the NBC television affiliate in Portland in 1959, and its KING-TV in Seattle replaced KOMO in the network lineup.) After a decade in which the station struggled to build an identity in the market, KATU began to find its way in the early 1970s after expanding its local programming. New shows such as public affairs program Town Hall, weekend children's program Bumpity, and talk show AM Northwest proved critical to the station's success. AM Northwest continues to air, while other shows, such as Faces & Places and Two at Four, ended in the 1980s. KATU was Portland's first commercial station to broadcast in digital, doing so in 1998 alongside Oregon Public Broadcasting. KATU shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 43, using virtual channel 2. Sinclair Broadcast Group ownership On April 10, 2013, KATU and Fisher Communications' other holdings were acquired by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The Federal Communications Commission granted its approval of the deal on August 7, and the sale was completed the following day. On May 8, 2017, Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media—owner of CW affiliate KRCW-TV (channel 32)—for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune, pending regulatory approval by the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. Sinclair would have been required to sell one of KATU or KRCW-TV if the deal were to be approved. However, in 2018, the FCC designated the deal for hearing by an administrative law judge;