Tribune acquired WTTV and its Kokomo satellite WTTK (channel 29) from the Sinclair Broadcast Group on April 29, 2002; this created the market's first television duopoly under current FCC regulations with WXIN when the purchase was finalized on July 24 (Sinclair – which had ironically considered acquiring WXIN and the other Renaissance stations in 1996 – had briefly owned WTTV and WIIB (channel 63, now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WIPX-TV) from 1996 to 1998 under a cross-ownership waiver as the FCC had prohibited duopolies at the time). While an affiliation swap should have been expected given that WTTV was a VHF station that had been on the air much longer than UHF outlet WXIN, and WXIN had an established news department whereas WTTV had been outsourcing its newscasts since 1990, Tribune kept the WB affiliation on WTTV and Fox programming on WXIN due to the fact that WTTV had a weaker signal in the northern parts of the market as its transmitter was located farther south than other area stations, requiring WTTK to relay its programming. Additionally since Fox holds the broadcast television rights to the National Football Conference, the network only airs Indianapolis Colts regular season games (at least two per season) in which the NFL team plays against an NFC opponent (with most other games airing on WISH-TV (channel 8) at the time through American Football Conference rightsholder CBS; however, starting in 2014, any games that are moved from WISH or WTTV to WXIN will air on channel 59, via the new 'cross-flex' broadcast rules), so Fox did not consider Indianapolis an important market for getting a VHF affiliate (incidentally, WXIN carried Colts-related analysis programs including head coach Bill Polian's discussion program from 2006 to 2008, assuming the rights from and later losing them to WISH-TV and WNDY-TV).