On December 3, 2018, Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Media Group announced it would acquire Tribune's assets for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal—which would make Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon its expected closure late in the third quarter of 2019—would give KTLA additional sister stations in the same two markets where it would have gained adjacent outlets under the aborted Sinclair deal (Nexstar owns NBC affiliate KGET-TV and low-power Telemundo affiliate KKEY-LP in Bakersfield and NBC affiliate KSEE and CBS affiliate KGPE in Fresno) as well as an additional sister station upstate in the San Francisco–Oakland–San Jose market (MyNetworkTV affiliate KRON-TV, which—as a result of the group's decision to sell New York City sister station and the largest Tribune property by market size, WPIX, to the E. W. Scripps Company on March 20, 2019, with its subsequent purchase by Nexstar partner company Mission Broadcasting completed on December 30, 2020 to comply with the FCC's reach limit rules—would be displaced as Nexstar's largest station property by KTLA). The sale was approved by the FCC on September 16 and was completed on September 19, 2019.