CA and NY AGs Lead Effort to Block WPRI’s Parent Company Nexstar’s Merger

CA and NY AGs Lead Effort to Block WPRI’s Parent Company Nexstar’s Merger

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alongside a coalition of eight attorneys general, filed a lawsuit to block the acquisition of Tegna by Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (Nexstar).

Nexstar is the parent company of WPRI-12 and Fox-64 in the Providence market.

Right-leaning Nexstar, along with WJAR-10’s and ABC6’s parent company Sinclair, tried to curry favor with the Trump administration for regulatory approvals and cancelled Jimmy Kimmel last year — only to reverse field after viewers were outraged.

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According to the attorneys general, Tegna and Nexstar are two major broadcast station companies that own and operate television stations throughout the country. If allowed to proceed, the deal would create the largest broadcast station group in the United States, putting more broadcast programming in the hands of fewer people, removing control from the communities they report to, cutting local jobs, and significantly impacting the delivery of news and other media content to Americans nationwide.

Over the years, Nexstar has been a major GOP supporter.

Due to the considerable increase in consolidation, the deal is also expected to raise prices and harm consumers. In California, the combined entity would own half of the Big Four (FOX, NBC, ABC, and CBS) network-affiliated stations, including the local FOX and ABC stations in the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto area and the local FOX and CBS stations in the San Diego area. Alarmingly, reports have already detailed Nexstar’s firing of long-standing journalists in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

“Today, my office has filed a lawsuit to block the proposed merger of broadcasting giants Nexstar and Tegna. This merger would cause incredibly high levels of concentration in local TV markets and is expected to raise cable and satellite prices across the country, causing irreparable harm to local news and consumers who rely on their reporting as a critical source of information,” said Attorney General Bonta. “If approved, this multibillion-dollar deal would combine the nation’s largest and third-largest television-station conglomerates, creating a behemoth covering 80% of U.S. television households. This merger is illegal, plain and simple, running contrary to federal antitrust laws that protect consumers. When broadcast media is owned by a handful of companies, we get fewer voices, less competition, and communities lose the critical check on power that local journalism delivers.”

The lawsuit, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleges that the merger clearly violates Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which holds that mergers that substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly are illegal. If the Nexstar/Tegna merger is allowed to proceed, local markets will immediately see a lessening of competition, including both the Sacramento and San Diego markets.