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A federal judge has temporarily blocked Nexstar Media Group’s $6.2 billion takeover of Tysons-based Tegna, finding that opponents are likely to succeed in their antitrust challenge.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Troy L. Nunley issued the preliminary injunction late Friday afternoon, April 17, in Sacramento, California. The order keeps the companies separate while a lawsuit brought by eight Democratic attorneys general and DirecTV proceeds.

The challengers argue that the merger would raise consumer prices, weaken local journalism and violate federal protections against monopolies.

Announced last year, the deal would create a company controlling 265 television stations across 44 states and the District of Columbia. Most are local affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox or NBC.

Nunley wrote that the expanded company would likely gain leverage to increase the retransmission fees charged to television providers such as DirecTV, with those costs potentially passed to subscribers. Distributors could face pressure to accept higher fees or risk service disruptions affecting popular programming, including Sunday NFL games.

The judge also pointed to Nexstar’s history of combining local news operations when it owns multiple stations in the same market. Such consolidation, he wrote, could leave viewers with fewer choices for local news.

Temporarily stopping the transaction is in the public interest, Nunley concluded.

Nexstar’s attorneys argued that the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice had already reviewed and cleared the acquisition. They also said the FCC’s approval requires the company to expand local journalism and programming rather than reduce it.

The merger required the Trump administration’s Republican-led FCC to waive limits on the number of local stations a single company may own. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in March that Nexstar had agreed to sell six stations.

Nunley characterized the FCC review as unusual and found that it did not restrain the acquisition’s apparent anticompetitive effects. He also noted that the Justice Department closed its investigation in March through an “early termination,” ending the review sooner than the period normally required by law.

The judge further cited President Donald Trump’s public call in February for regulators to approve the transaction to “knock out the Fake News” while the FCC licensing proceeding remained pending.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the decision a “critical victory” Friday evening. She said putting hundreds of local stations under one corporate owner would produce higher prices and lower-quality programming, and pledged to continue pursuing the case to protect competition.

Attorneys for Nexstar and Tegna did not immediately respond to requests for comment.