Oregon among eight states suing to block Nexstar-Tegna broadcast merger
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — Eight state attorneys general, including Oregon's Dan Rayfield, have filed an antitrust lawsuit to block Nexstar’s pending acquisition of Tegna, which they claim would strengthen the right-leaning Nexstar and shrink the number of station owners in the US.
The states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, say the TV marketplace consolidation would hurt consumers.
Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James were joined in the lawsuit by the attorneys general of Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, North Carolina, Connecticut and Virginia.
The lawsuit is the latest instance of state attorneys general acting as a counterweight to President Donald Trump. Other states may join the coalition in the near future.
“This merger is illegal, plain and simple, running contrary to federal antitrust laws that protect consumers,” Bonta said in a statement late Wednesday. “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.”
Rayfield said Thursday that if the deal is allowed to proceed, it 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.
Due to the considerable increase in consolidation, he said, the deal is also expected to raise prices and harm consumers.
“Right now, when you flip between KGW and KOIN, you’re getting two different newsrooms, with two different perspectives on what’s happening in your community,” said Attorney General Rayfield. “This deal would change that. Suddenly those two competing newsrooms would answer to the same corporate boss, making the same budget and staffing decisions, and editorial choices about and what stories get told — or don’t.”
The lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California alleges 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.
In addition to the U.S. Department of Justice, the attorneys general said Federal Communications Commission also has authority and responsibility to halt such a merger, as the $6.2 billion Nexstar/Tegna deal would violate an FCC rule which would prohibit this merger.
However, Rayfield noted that on February 7, President Trump tweeted “Get that deal done!,” saying that the two companies should be allowed to merge in order to “Knock out the Fake News” from the “Fake News National TV Networks.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr immediately responded on social media: “Let’s get it done.
Regarding local journalism, Bonta’s office highlighted recent layoffs at Nexstar-owned newsrooms in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
The state action will likely slow Nexstar’s months-long effort to acquire Tegna. The station owners had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.
Bonta has also vowed to “vigorously” review Paramount’s pending deal to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, the media giant that owns CNN.
The antitrust lawsuit challenging the Nexstar deal was filed in the Eastern District of California, alleging that the merger would harm local TV markets, including Sacramento and San Diego.
The state-level suit stands in stark contrast to the federal government’s posture toward the pending deal.
Last month, Trump changed his tune on the deal. Having previously sounded skeptical of a Nexstar-Tegna combination, he wrote on Truth Social that Nexstar’s acquisition “will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level.”
There will, by definition, be less actual competition in markets like Denver, Seattle and Dallas.
For Nexstar to take over Tegna, the FCC would have to change the national TV ownership rule, which caps station ownership at 39 percent of all US TV households. Trump’s ally atop the FCC, Brendan Carr, has said he wants to raise the cap, and last month he said the president is “exactly right” about the Nexstar deal. “Let’s get it done,” Carr wrote.
The coalition of state attorneys general highlighted the Trump administration’s support for the deal in a press release overnight.
Nexstar navigates Trump-era politics
Nexstar CEO Perry Sook has worked overtime to appeal to Trump, billing his company as “the anti-fake news” and going on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show to praise Trump’s policies. Media observers have asked whether new MAGA-friendly talk shows on the Nexstar-owned NewsNation cable channel were also partly a way to appeal to the president.
But the Nexstar-Tegna deal has also created a schism in conservative media, with Newsmax and One America News Network lobbying hard against the deal.
Nexstar’s pursuit of Trump administration approval for the deal became national news last fall when Carr publicly condemned ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, and Nexstar almost immediately yanked Kimmel’s show from its ABC-affiliated stations.
Nexstar denied being influenced by Carr’s comments, but the perception that it capitulated in the face of Trump administration pressure provoked widespread criticism. Nexstar restored Kimmel’s show on its ABC-affiliated stations in a matter of weeks.
Nexstar and its allies have argued that broadcast consolidation is necessary so that station owners can compete with much bigger streaming and social media platforms.
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