Could WSVN Miami lose its FOX affiliation?

WSVN the loud brash ground breaking tabloid FOX affiliate in Miami which is owned by SUNBEAM may be in danger. Moments ago it was announced that 21st Century FOX is buying WSFL-TV currently a CW affiliate. SUNBEAM looks like it will loose another major network affiliates. Some will remember that NBC bought a couple of cobbled together stations in Boston and removed their affiliation from long-time Sunbeam-owned NBC affiliate WHDH. Resulting in a long legal battle. Sunbeam lost in the end. As of right now WHDH, the tabloid sibling to WSVN has no network affiliation and has double-down on local news.
It bears watching if FOX could do similar and drop its affiliation with WSVN and flip WSFL into the FOX affiliation for South Florida. Because frankly it makes no sense to buy a small CW affiliate if they weren't planning to do an affiliate switch. This opportunity to buy WSFL came about as a result of Sinclair Broadcasting being forced to sell off some stations to comply with current FCC regulations on the number of stations any single broadcaster is allowed to own.

JUST IN: Twenty-First Century Fox announces deal to expand its local TV portfolio by acquiring seven local stations from Sinclair Broadcast Group for about $910M.https://t.co/K7nBXEryBy pic.twitter.com/sxd5HITWnI

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) May 9, 2018

Is even more news the future for WSVN

WSVN already went through this year's ago when they lost the NBC affiliation as a consequence of the 1988 South Florida TV Switch : NBC bought WTVJ & it became an O&O. That also meant the CBS network would move to WCIX (now WFOR) with Fox moving from WCIX to WSVN.
Also, you meant "lose the affiliation"

I could see them swapping affiliations with CBS’s MyNet affiliated WBFS-TV with their CW affiliate. That way they would bring each networks “in house”.

Exactly that change in the late 80s gave birth to the News as 'Entertainment" strategy that SUNBEAM employed in the loss of all NBC primetime programming. At the time FOX wasnt considered a major player. So WSVN decided to "sex-up" up its news programming and increase dramatically the number of hours of local news broadcast. The tabloidization worked for WSVN and coupled with the increasing popularity of the FOX primetime programming it became the model for many FOX stations including the eventually tabloid-esque slant to the FOX NEWS CHANNEL (political leanings aside). WSVN became so successful that many stations started emulating many presentation techniques the station used on air throughout the 90s and early 00s. The thumping music, scary sounding announcer, flashing fast-paced graphics and eventually WSVN on air-staff started leaving getting hired by stations all over the country.

One notorious example of copying the tone of WSVN was the changes of WBBM Chicago
From this

To This

The music and graphics change dramatically, tabloid style writing, deeper"growl" added to the theme and the set.

Those changes all led up to this, the pinnacle of its tabloid era.

Then realisation they went to far as it was toned down to this later that year and the writing toned down.

WSVN already has quite a substantial amount of news and local output on their station.

Today In Florida runs for 5 hours from 5am to 10am, there's a one hour News at Noon, the evening bulletins run from 4pm to 7pm and the late night news runs from 10pm to 11.30pm, plus they produce their own weekday entertainment news programme, Deco Drive, which airs at 7:30pm and 11:30pm. They also produce their own local Sports Extra programme which goes out Sunday nights at 11:30, which seems to be a common thing that a lot of local stations do.

Losing FOX affiliaition isn't a huge deal for them, as Fox only programme 2 hours a night Monday to Saturday, 3 hours on Sunday in primetime. They might hurt a bit on weekends, due to losing Fox Sports programming, and they'll also lose Fox News Sunday, but there are alternatives at least on the Sunday morning political front. Replacing the sports programming maybe more difficult.

They could always add to their morning news just as many local stations have done and start at 4:30am or even 4am. Their sister station WHDH runs local news at 7pm for 30 minutes, where WSVN currently have Inside Edition, but Inside Edition could always be moved into primetime at 8pm to help fill that gap. Also, WHDH also run local news at 9pm for an hour, which again is something that WSVN could easily do too.

Losing the NBC affiliation on WHDH was a bigger deal for Sunbeam than losing FOX affiliation will be for WSVN.

CW affiliation would become an option for primetime to as a direct replacement but as you say apart from weekend sport it looks like they could survive this.

Well its not just a programming loss thats the only problem. You have to remember they have to still bring in advertising that will bring in the money. So its not just a simple matter of filling programming holes. Thats easy enough with syndicated programming and adding more news. WSVN has built up enough brand awareness with the SOUTH FLORIDA audience they will switch away from network programming to watch what ever fills the gaps on WSVN, if this actually happens. Also will they continue to tune in to watch their news programming after viewing network programming on another channel. Seemingly WHDH-Boston is doing ok after their switch. If FOX pulls their affiliation, the bottom line is always the deciding factor in the next step of the strategy. Miami is also slightly different than Boston in that the Miami Spanish-speaking stations are far more popular than the English-language stations, so the pie for the English-speaking audience is definitely smaller. As more people tune into TELEMUNDO and UNIVISION, than all of the English stations and are typically number 1 in overall audience numbers

This article from 2014 kinds helps understand the cut-throat nature of news in South Florida.
http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/75019/local-news-competition-heats-up-in-miami/page/1

Credible local news gossip site. FTVLive has a bit about this story. Totally bears watching what 21C Fox is going to do with WSFL.

http://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2018/5/9/like-we-said

TV NewsCheck posted this article in March. hmmm
http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/111681/ed-ansins-fox-problem-net-comp-redux

This isn't the first time Fox did this, they did this in Charlotte, NC. Once they bought WJZY 46, which was the CW station in the market and became a Fox O&O thus pulled the affiliation from WCCB