The Federal Communications Commission yesterday approved Nexstar Media Group's $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, granting a waiver that lets the broadcast giant go way past the national limit on station ownership.
Nexstar said it closed the acquisition late in the day yesterday, immediately after receiving the FCC approval. The deal was also approved by the US Department of Justice, but a group of state attorneys general are challenging the merger in court in an attempt to unwind it.
Opponents say the FCC lacks authority to grant the waiver and that only Congress can change the 39 percent ownership limit. While the FCC says Nexstar will own fewer than 15 percent of TV stations, the cap in the FCC's National Television Ownership Rule is calculated by the percentage of US households reached by a single entity's stations. The Nexstar/Tegna combination will reach 80 percent of TV households in the US, or 54.5 percent when applying what's known as the "UHF discount."
