Latest in local TV

Fox Corp. has bought three TV stations from Nexstar, the top U.S. owner of local stations, in a $350 million transactions that will give the company a position in 14 of the top DMAs. Under the deal, Fox has also agreed to sell Nexstar two stations in Charlotte, NC: Fox affiliate WJZY and MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYT…

Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios has acquired 11 local TV stations from USA Television for $290 million. The stations serve small to mid-sized cities (spanning markets ranked No. 79 to No. 188 in the U.S.) and have network affiliations with ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. While the deal’s valuation is a fraction of the…

Nexstar said Thursday it has closed its acquisition of Tribune Media for $7.2 billion, including debt, vaulting to the position of No. 1 owner of local TV stations in the U.S. The deal caps a remarkable rise for a company that consisted of a single radio station barely a generation ago. Sinclair Broadcast Group had…

Tegna stock, which ran up last week after reports of acquisition interest, shed 5% Wednesday after the company revealed it had rebuffed overtures by private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Tegna (a near-anagram of “Gannett”) was originally part of Gannett before the company’s newspaper and TV assets were divided…

Nexstar Media Group, which has grown in just 22 years from a single Pennsylvania radio station into a local TV giant, has reportedly struck a deal to acquire Tribune Media for about $4.1 billion. The acquisition, first reported by Reuters, would vault Nexstar ahead of Sinclair Broadcast Group to make it the top local…

Less than a week before the midterm elections, political TV advertising is setting records for both volume and negativity. Total political ad spending will reach $6.75 billion in 2018, research firm PQ Media predicts, with about half of that going to television. A study released Tuesday by the Wesleyan Media Project…

As New Fox moves its flagship broadcast network toward a programming lineup dominated by live sports, one analyst wonders if it could come to view the traditional relationship between the network and its local affiliates as expendable. “I’m concerned that the move by Fox to go toward more of a national sports play, at…

In another boost to major station owners like Sinclair and Fox, yet another partisan vote by the Republican-controlled FCC moved the commission a step closer to raising or eliminating the 39% ownership cap. The National Television Multiple Ownership Rule, which passed 3-2 today, won’t get nearly the same amount of…

Extending a string of 2017 de-regulatory moves, Ajit Pai, President Donald Trump’s appointee to lead the FCC, has formally begun the process of reviewing rules limiting the number of TV stations a single owner can control. If the ownership cap is eased, as expected, by the Republican-controlled, 5-member commission…

Sinclair Broadcasting, already the No. 1 owner of local TV stations in the U.S., is poised to become a more potent media player by acquiring Tribune Media, according to multiple reports. The offer, which both Reuters and Bloomberg reported to be worth in the range of $44 to $45 a share, values Tribune at about $4…