Last May Allbritton Communications, the company that heads up POLITICO, announced that they would be selling their televisions station holdings in order to focus more on new media. This shift included the sale of local television staples like Washington’s WJLA, NewsChannel 8. Late Thursday night the FCC approved the sale of these stations for $985 million to the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

The sale is scheduled to close on August 1, and with it comes an end to nearly four decades of the Allbritton family’s involvement in the broadcast business.

“Hey it’s great to do a deal, but it’s kind of tough to walk away. I’ve been doing this 20 years personally, and you don’t walk away from that without some thoughts,” Robert Allbritton, the current CEO of Allbritton Communications said in an interview with POLITICO. “It’s going to be a good business for a while to come, but man, I’m 45 and I don’t know if it’s going to be a good business for the rest of my life.”

In addition to these two D.C. based station, Sinclair is also acquiring WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia; KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas; KTUL in Tulsa, Oklahoma; WCIV in Charleston, South Carolina; and WCFT-TV and WJSU-TV in Birmingham, Alabama from Allbritton.

These acquisitions will raise Sinclair’s revenue to $1.9 billion, based on 2012 revenue numbers from the company and the acquired stations. Currently the company owns 149 television stations in 76 markets.

While the approval process was relatively smooth, the FCC did force Sinclair to give up licenses to three stations, based on violations regarding joint sales agreements. This past May the FCC led a crackdown on monopolies in the broadcast industry. Specifically the FCC’s policies have placed additional scrutiny on broadcasting companies that share resources, such as advertising staff, claiming these business deals are being made to circumvent FCC rules baring a single company from owning more than one of the top four stations in a region.