Return to CBS
While Cincinnati was initially unaffected by the 1994–96 affiliation switches, as WCPO was in a middle of a long-term affiliation contract with CBS, such contract was abruptly stopped. WKRC returned to CBS in 1996, reversing the 1961 affiliation swap. WCPO had agreed to affiliate with ABC in September 1995,[11] but WKRC's contract with ABC was not set to expire for another year. In May 1996, WKRC began airing half-hour-long special programs detailing upcoming programming changes at the two stations.[12] On June 3, 1996, WKRC's contract ended, and WKRC rejoined CBS while WCPO rejoined ABC. The last ABC program to air on WKRC was the ABC Sunday Night Movie airing of the 1993 telefilm The Only Way Out, and the first CBS program since it rejoined was CBS This Morning.
In September 1996, WKRC was acquired by Jacor after most of Citicasters' other television stations were sold to New World Communications, which had become involved in an affiliation deal with Fox that was announced in May 1994. The Jacor deal reunited channel 12 with its AM sister, which had been bought by Jacor in 1993 during Great American Broadcasting's bankruptcy reorganization. Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications in 1998.
Although owned by Clear Channel at the time, the station changed its branding to "Local 12" in 2003. This was inspired by the "Local Mandate", a station brand standardization adopted by Post-Newsweek Stations for its own television stations.
In 2006, Clear Channel ranked WKRC as the top CBS affiliate in the United States. On November 16 of that year, the company announced that it would sell its entire television division, including WKRC,[13] after being bought by private equity firms in order to focus on its radio and event properties. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its stations to Providence Equity Partners.[14] Providence Equity teamed up with Sandy DiPasquale to form a new holding company, Newport Television, for the station group. Concurrently, Clear Channel applied to place WKRC and several other stations to the Aloha Station Trust just in case Newport Television failed to close on the group. However, as a result of Newport Television closing on the purchase of WKRC and the other stations on March 14, 2008, Aloha Station Trust and the would-be new owners of Clear Channel opted not to consummate on the acquisition of the station. As a result, Newport Television became WKRC's fourth owner in just over 20 years. As a result of the sale, the Citicasters name disappeared from WKRC's license, dissolving channel 12's last link to Taft Broadcasting; the Citicasters name is still alive as a holding company within the corporate structure of Clear Channel's successor, iHeartMedia.
On June 18, 2008, Newport announced that it was eliminating 7.5% of the jobs at its 56 stations, attributing the layoffs to a weak economy. As a result, WKRC fired 18 staff members. On July 19, 2012, Newport Television reached deals to sell 22 of its 27 stations to three station groups – Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Cox Media Group. WKRC-TV was among the six sold to Sinclair.[15] WSTR-TV (channel 64) was transferred to Deerfield Media (who also received San Antonio's CW affiliate KMYS in the same deal) because the Cincinnati market, despite being the 35th-largest market, has only seven full-power commercial stations, which are not enough to legally permit a duopoly. However, Sinclair retained control of WSTR through a local marketing agreement. The deal also reunited WKRC-TV with WSYX (the former WTVN-TV), another station formerly owned by Taft. The sale was completed on December 3.[16]
