On July 1, 2013, Local TV announced that its nineteen television stations (including KFOR and KAUT) would be acquired by the Chicago-based Tribune Company for $2.75 billion. Upon the sale's December 27 completion, KAUT became the first independent station to be operated by Tribune Broadcasting since the January 1995 launch of The WB (it would later be joined by Tribune's Chicago flagship WGN-TV, when that station disaffiliated from The CW in September 2016); the acquisition also reunited KAUT with former sister station KTLA, which Golden West sold in 1983 to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which in turn sold that station to Tribune in 1985.