In late January 2017, it was announced that WIN and Southern Cross Austereo had commenced negotiations over the sale of SCA's Ten affiliate station NRN in Northern NSW in exchange for WIN's Wollongong radio station i98FM. This deal would have given SCA access to the Wollongong radio market and allowed WIN to expand into the Northern NSW market for the first time, giving it coverage across all regional eastern Australian markets. Southern Cross later withdrew from negotiations on 20 February 2017 with no explanation given. However, WIN and Southern Cross later finalised an agreement on 28 March 2017 where they would sell NRN to WIN for a total of $55 million, however i98FM had been removed from the agreement. The sale took effect on 31 May 2017, however, NRN was maintained by SCA as "Ten Northern NSW" until playout and transmission were transferred to WIN on 1 September 2017. On the transfer date, the station adopted the WIN branding and the channel numbers were reshuffled to align with WIN's other stations, but as Nine-owned NBN Television holds the 8-numbered digital channels in northern NSW, NRN's digital channels will remain on the 5-numbered digital channels.