On August 19, 2025, American media company Nexstar Media Group announced its intent to acquire competitor Tegna Inc. The acquisition brought together two of the United States's largest owners of broadcast TV stations, with overlapping holdings in 35 local markets. While Nexstar cited synergies from the increased ownership of multiple stations in a changing media landscape, critics found the deal would result in newsroom closures, job losses, and higher retransmission consent rates paid by multichannel video programming distributors such as cable and satellite broadcasters. The size and scope of the company relative to a national ownership cap was also in dispute. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced its approval of the transaction on March 19, 2026. The FCC's Media Bureau waived the national cap and required only six divestitures within two years of the merger closing; this, along with the absence of a public vote among the commissioners, drew bipartisan criticism.
Shortly before the closing, satellite television provider DirecTV and a coalition of eight state attorneys general filed to halt the merger in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. Federal judge Troy Nunley ordered a halt to integration activities in a temporary restraining order issued on March 27, 2026, superseded by a preliminary injunction issued on April 17. As a result, although Nexstar has closed on its acquisition of Tegna, Tegna and its subsidiaries temporarily continue to operate autonomously under Nexstar ownership, as the injunction forbids Nexstar from absorbing Tegna's assets and operations. As of April 30, 2026, 13 state attorneys general were part of the action.
Background Tegna Inc.
Tegna Inc. was created in 2015 after the Gannett Company (later renamed as the USA Today Co. due to their ownership of the USA Today newspaper in 2025) split into two companies, with Tegna focused solely on broadcasting assets and Gannett on newspapers and publishing. Tegna had been on the market previously, beginning when activist shareholder Soo Kim expressed interest in the company in March 2020, and engaged in two failed proxy fights for control of the board of directors in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, the company agreed to be taken private by Kim's hedge fund Standard General, with financing assistance from Apollo Global Management. Standard would have replaced the management and divested some stations to Cox Media Group, in which Apollo owned a stake. The deal encountered opposition from Democratic-aligned political figures, among them Nancy Pelosi, and was designated for hearing by an administrative law judge in February 2023. This was seen as a death knell for the transaction, which was terminated three months later. Brendan Carr, then part of the Republican minority in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), approved of the buyout and issued a joint statement with Nathan Simington critical of the designation, which was handled by the FCC Media Bureau.
Nexstar Media Group
Nexstar Media Group was founded in 1996 as Nexstar Broadcasting Group by president/CEO Perry Sook with the purchase of WYOU in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Nexstar's history has been defined by continuous mergers and acquisitions including Media General in 2016 and Tribune Broadcasting in 2019; these included divestitures of overlap stations to satisfy ownership restrictions. Nexstar has used shell companies to evade restrictions dating back to when WYOU was sold to what is now Mission Broadcasting so WBRE-TV could be acquired. The Tribune purchase prompted WPIX in New York City to be sold to the E. W. Scripps Company, but purchased by Mission in 2021, with Nexstar operating it via a local marketing agreement."WPIX Local Programming and Marketing Agreement", CDBS Public Access, Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved December 30, 2020. In 2024, the FCC, then chaired by Jessica Rosenworcel, fined Nexstar $1.5 million after determining it illegally circumvented restrictions with the WPIX LMA, an action Carr publicly disagreed with.
In January 2005, Nexstar entered into a retransmission consent dispute with Cox Communications and Cable One that blacked out 27 stations owned by Nexstar and Mission from both companies nationwide. Nexstar sought a monthly increase of 30 cents per subscriber, which Cox and Cable One claimed would result in higher rates for subscribers. This dispute had origins in the 1992 Cable Act, which enabled stations to charge cable operators for the rights to carry their signals. Despite Nexstar COO Duane Lammers saying the company was "in solid financial health" Nexstar lost $140 million between 2001 and 2005 and was $600 million in debt; compensation from the Big Four networks to Nexstar also fell 22.4 percent in 2005 and another 36.4 percent in 2006. Lammers led the company's bargaining efforts and gained a reputation for hardball tactics; Lammers viewed the dispute as the first battle of "an all-out war or our industry is going to go out of business".
The dispute ended after ten months when Cox agreed to a long-term contract and followed losses in revenue from all parties. Cox and Cable One did not pay the straight license fee increases Nexstar demanded, but agreed to spend additional money advertising on Nexstar stations. Additional contracts with cable providers in Arkansas were agreed to right as a December 31, 2005, deadline approached, meeting all of Nexstar's demands; Sook estimated those deals represented an additional $12 million per year. Lammers left Nexstar in 2008, but began consulting other station groups on cable retransmission negotiations. In 2008, retransmission fees constituted 4.5 percent of Nexstar's revenue; by 2012, this increased to 14.5 percent and enabled the company to purchase more stations. Sook told D Magazine in 2020, "without it [retransmission revenue from cable], we'd be in worse shape than the newspaper business".
Nexstar relaunched WGN America, a cable channel included with the Tribune merger, as NewsNation over a four-year process beginning in 2020. At launch, NewsNation was billed as a centrist, "just the facts" cable news outlet with minimal punditry, drawing on the resources of the company's local news departments. Nexstar purchased The Hill in 2021 along with 75 percent majority control of The CW in 2022. The company boasted a stable balance sheet and a minimum of debt and publicly expressed a desire to buy additional stations; in 2023, a senior advisor to Sook told Deadline Hollywood Nexstar could buy the ABC Owned Television Stations from The Walt Disney Company with "little friction" if they became available.
The FCC and deregulation The FCC previously entertained attempts at relaxing or removing restrictions on television station ownership. Michael Powell's tenure as FCC chair during the George W. Bush administration was highlighted by deregulation and heightened content scrutiny, but one 2003 initiative to raise the national ownership cap from 35 percent to 45 percent was approved by the commission and ultimately settled at 39 percent after Congress intervened and NBC, CBS and Fox sued in federal court. On April 20, 2017, the FCC, under chair Ajit Pai, voted to reinstate the "UHF discount", a policy enacted in 1985 allowing station groups to count UHF stations by only 50 percent of their population for ownership cap purposes. The discount, seen as outdated following the 2009 digital television switch, was repealed by prior chair Tom Wheeler in June 2016 during the FCC's combined 2010 and 2014 Quadrennial Review, which retained and tightened other restrictions. Pai's reinstatement of the discount, among other regulatory relaxing, was regarded by industry analysts to help assist Sinclair Broadcast Group's attempted purchase of Tribune Media, which was announced several days later.
Rosenworcel, Pai's successor, upheld existing restrictions in December 2023 during the 2018 Quadrennial Review. Carr issued a public statement objecting to her "ostrich-like" approach, saying, "[t]he law compels us to do so. The facts tell us to do so. And the public interest in promoting local news and information counsel in favor of doing so. Yet the rules will remain in place, impervious to those compelling forces".
Brendan Carr as FCC chair
After Donald Trump was re-elected president in 2024, forecasters predicted a more favorable environment for media mergers, increasing mergers and acquisitions activity in local television. Station groups and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) agitated for relaxation of ownership rules both within specific media markets and nationally, in particular the 39 percent ownership cap. They cited the increasing movement of programming and advertising revenue to digital and streaming media outlets. Whereas over two-thirds of U.S. adults subscribed to cable television in 2000 per Pew Research, by 2025, this number decreased to 36 percent, while 83 percent of U.S. adults subscribed to at least one streaming service. Hank Price, columnist for TVNewsCheck, saw this potential deregulation as a necessity, writing, "... most communities now have more television stations producing more hours of local news than is economically viable. This has created extreme financial pressure on stations, raising the specter of some owners becoming unable to continue."
Carr was elevated to FCC chair at the start of Trump's second term in January 2025. His promotion was praised by Perry Sook in a Nexstar press release, who said, "He is an outstanding choice who understands the needs of local broadcasters and we look forward to working with him during this transformational era." Carr demonstrated an aggressive bully pulpit tone seen as a marked departure from past FCC chairs. During the merger of Skydance Media and Paramount Global, Carr demanded multiple conditions including the installment of an ombudsman for CBS News and later claimed in an interview that CBS's non-renewal of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert helped meet regulatory approval. The Wall Street Journal noted that media companies that have had previous public altercations with Trump would be less motivated to participate in potential deals.
Following the resignation of Geoffrey Starks in March 2025, Carr announced the creation of an initiative titled "Delete, Delete, Delete" aimed at repealing existing laws and, according to Carr, "unleashing a new wave of economic opportunity by ending the regulatory onslaught from Washington". In July 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued Zimmer Radio of Mid-Missouri v. FCC, in which it struck down limitations on one company owning two of the top four TV stations in a market, the same rule Price advocated the commission abolish. Following this, multiple transactions were announced, including a multi-market swap of stations between Gray Media and the E. W. Scripps Company; Sinclair Broadcast Group's acquisition of multiple stations owned by Deerfield Media and other shell companies; and Gray's purchase of several stations owned by Allen Media Group, many of which in markets where Gray already had a station.