Colorado Democrats Press FCC to Reject Nexstar/Tegna Merger
House Assistant Democratic Leader Joe Neguse and Sen. Michael Bennet, both D-Colo., are urging FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to reject Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna (see 2508190042) because it will violate the current 39% national broadcast-ownership cap and “could have devastating consequences for” their state. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said in September that he expected the FCC to act on the cap before year-end to allow the Tegna purchase to proceed (see 2509050058).
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“Approving this merger is not in the public interest, nor is it within the authority of the FCC,” Bennet and Neguse said in a letter to Carr, released Friday. “Congress made it clear that only Congress, not the FCC, has the authority to unilaterally lift or eliminate the national broadcast ownership cap.” The ownership limitation “promotes competition and incentivizes stations to maintain local newsroom activity and retain local journalism jobs,” they said. “Without it, our media coverage will become more nationalized and local coverage will decrease.”
The lawmakers cited past mergers of other outlets into Nexstar-owned Denver station KDVR as examples in which “acquired stations often replace diverse, community-specific reporting with centrally produced content, reducing ideological variety and distancing local broadcasting from the very communities it’s meant to serve.” Nexstar’s purchase of Tegna “could jeopardize stations in Colorado and reduce consumer access to varied and locally-oriented programming,” they said. “In Denver, [KDVR and Tegna-owned KUSA] and its sister station KTVD … could potentially be folded together. And the possibility of anticompetitive consolidation is not confined to Colorado -- similar concerns exist in Indianapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa.”