Nexstar’s $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, announced in August and approved in March, seemed to clear regulatory review quickly and with few concessions. But the deal’s speed and the scale it creates prompted lawsuits and a court order that temporarily stopped Nexstar from operating Tegna’s stations.
If completed as planned, the merger would give Nexstar control of 265 local TV stations across 44 states and the District of Columbia, reaching roughly 80% of U.S. households — far beyond limits suggested by earlier federal competition policy. Rather than face an aggressive challenge, Nexstar secured a waiver from the Federal Communications Commission’s media bureau and saw the Justice Department decline to sue. The company also made programming and personnel moves that aligned it with conservative commentary: it briefly pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC show from some affiliates after critical comments, hired pro-Trump commentator Katie Pavlich to a prime-time slot on its cable channel NewsNation, and publicly courted support from the Trump administration. President Trump posted “GET THAT DEAL DONE!” on Truth Social, and FCC Chair Brendan Carr publicly echoed the endorsement.
Carr approved the bureau’s waiver without a full commission vote, arguing that consolidation could help local news amid newspaper decline. Critics said that reasoning conflated the fortunes of a single dominant broadcaster with the broader health of local journalism. Observers noted the unusually rapid approval compared with other recent large media reviews: Sinclair’s bid for Tribune Media was scuttled after 15 months of review, while Nexstar’s earlier Tribune acquisition won approval in 10 months.
Nexstar moved quickly after regulatory signals of approval. On the same day the FCC and Justice Department signaled they would not block the transaction, Nexstar said it had begun absorbing Tegna. Tegna’s CEO Mike Steib reportedly sold shares that day and realized about $22.6 million. Nexstar’s CEO Perry Sook publicly thanked Trump, Carr and the Justice Department and addressed station employees from a Dallas studio — actions that critics said treated the merger as a fait accompli.
That speed sparked pushback. A coalition of eight state attorneys general, several other Democratic state AGs, and DirecTV sued to block the deal, arguing it would make Nexstar so dominant in local television that it violates antitrust laws designed to preserve competition and independent local news. DirecTV, which pays stations for retransmission rights, warned the merged company would have undue leverage in fee negotiations.
A federal judge in Sacramento, Chief Judge Troy Nunley, temporarily barred Nexstar from operating Tegna stations while consolidated lawsuits proceed. In court Nexstar’s lead trial lawyer Alex Okuliar argued that owning more stations does not automatically translate into greater bargaining power with pay-TV distributors: “We don’t think that an increase in the number of stations necessarily results in an increase in bargaining leverage,” he said.
State attorneys general and antitrust experts countered that decades of precedent recognize how scale can create leverage. California deputy attorney general for antitrust Laura Antonini and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser stressed the importance of multiple, independent local news sources. “We want a robust dissemination of ideas from different sources,” Weiser said.
The legal battle has immediate consequences for stations, journalists and viewers. Nexstar has told investors it expects about $300 million a year in “synergies” from consolidating operations, which would include merging programming teams in markets where it would own multiple major-network affiliates — cities such as Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Seattle. In past acquisitions, including Tribune Media in 2019, Nexstar cut dozens of station jobs; layoffs reportedly resumed as the company took on roughly $5 billion in debt to finance the Tegna deal.
Since the court’s temporary restraining order, Nexstar has been prevented from fully integrating Tegna’s operations. Stations that had briefly been instructed to add Nexstar branding to newscasts removed those graphics after the judge’s action. It remains unclear who is managing day-to-day operations at Tegna’s stations while litigation continues; Nexstar declined detailed comment.
Tegna journalists say they expect mass layoffs in markets where Nexstar would own two of the “big four” network affiliates. Reporters and producers, speaking to NPR on condition of anonymity, said management signaled plans to rely more on content from NewsNation rather than the national networks for local segments. Sook has discussed expanding NewsNation into a broader service that could supply content to the local stations Nexstar owns — a shift critics say could reduce local newsroom capacity.
DirecTV’s lead trial attorney Glenn Pomerantz urged the court to block full integration until a full antitrust trial is held, warning that immediate layoffs and operational changes would leave an independent Tegna unable to compete if a court later ordered the merger unwound. “An independent Tegna will not have a newsroom staff that they can immediately rely on to compete against Nexstar,” he said.
Nexstar counters that undoing the deal would be impractical because Tegna has already been absorbed, and that DirecTV’s concerns are primarily business disputes over retransmission fees rather than proof of anticompetitive conduct. Nexstar has also argued that a prolonged injunction could harm its ability to invest in new technology for the stations.
Judge Nunley, reportedly displeased with how quickly Nexstar moved to integrate Tegna, indicated he might impose a longer pause and said he would issue a ruling in the days following the hearing. Lawyers on both sides expect hard-fought proceedings ahead.
For viewers and communities, the central questions are immediate and long-term: who will produce local reporting, how many journalists will remain, and whether consolidated ownership will narrow the diversity of local voices. Nexstar notes it still owns only about 15% of U.S. local TV stations by count, but its reach into households and the bargaining position that reach creates has critics worried about market power and the future of local journalism.