place in total day ratings at the time of the purchase. (In recent years, KPLR and KDNL – which ranked fourth in the ratings at that time – have rotated between fourth and fifth place in total day viewership due to the weaker viewership of KDNL's programming since its news department was shut down by owner Sinclair Broadcast Group in 2001); St. Louis also has only nine full-power television stations, seven of which are commercial outlets, making this the only legal duopoly allowable in the market under FCC rules. Aborted sale to Sinclair; sale to Nexstar Media Group On May 8, 2017, Sinclair—which has owned KDNL-TV since the group's 1996 acquisition of its previous corporate parent River City Broadcasting—entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune. The market conditions that allowed for Tribune to form a duopoly between KTVI and KPLR in 2013, ironically, precluded Sinclair from acquiring KPLR directly as, at the time of the merger announcement, channel 11 ranked in fourth place and KDNL ranked fifth among the St. Louis market's television stations in total day viewership. As the FCC prohibits common ownership of two of the four highest-rated television stations in a single market, Sinclair would have been required to sell KPLR to a third-party group in order to comply with those rules and alleviate potential antitrust issues preceding approval of the acquisition (Sinclair CEO Christopher Ripley cited St. Louis as one of three markets, out of fourteen where ownership conflicts existed between the two groups, where the proposed acquisition would likely result in divestitures). Sinclair originally planned to retain operational stewardship of KPLR-TV through a local marketing agreement (possibly involving one of its partner companies); however, in an amendment to the Sinclair-Tribune merger submitted on February 21, 2018, the group announced that, in addition to purchasing KTVI's license and assets, it would retain ownership of KDNL, while selling KPLR-TV to an independent third party. (Sinclair, on behalf of Tribune, later attempted a sale proposal of KPLR to Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith Corporation—owner of KMOV since February 2014—for $65 million on April 24, 2018, only to cancel that deal on May 15 amid objections by the Justice Department, with Sinclair amending the merger transaction to place KPLR into a divestiture trust administered by Rafamedia LLC [led by media broker Richard A. Foreman] for