An announcement by Forum Communications Co. that it is buying an established independent television station in Sioux Falls marks the latest turn in a rapidly evolving media market in South Dakota’s largest city.

The Fargo-based company, which owns newspapers and television stations in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin, will buy KWSD-TV, channel 36, a high-power channel. The deal also includes a low-power station, call sign KCWS-TV.

Forum has been probing its way into the Sioux Falls market for a long time, and this summer it established a beachhead when it hired Patrick Lalley, the former news director of the Argus Leader, as a Sioux Falls-based reporter.

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