May 4, 2026
HEADLINE: Nexstar Fires Award Winning News Reporters - AFC, NFC football games blacked out!
That is the headline we might have seen until Eastern District Chief Judge Troy Nunley on April 17 put the brakes on the $6.2 billion merger broadcast giant Nexstar signed with fellow TV station operator TEGNA. (Shortly before that, similar genuine headlines about Nexstar firing reporters ran in the Chicago Sun-Times and the L.A. Times.)
President Trump originally came out against the merger - until Nexstar CEO Perry Sook talked him into it. The FCC then overreached its authority and gave Nexstar the ability to broadcast into 80% of local homes across the US, defying federal law setting that cap at 39%. (This to prevent one broadcaster from dominating information provided to any one local community. Broadcast licensees must legally “serve the public interest.”)
But an unlikely coalition of a group of States Attorneys General (Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia) headed by California AG Rob Bonta and Satellite TV provider DIRECTV mounted an anti-trust case against Nexstar. Although they filed separately, the Court consolidated two cases into one. (Kansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont joined the case April 30, making this a bi-partisan coalition.)
In an April 7 hearing I attended, the AG’s (“Plaintiff States”) attorney Laura Antonini made the case the Public Interest in Sacramento and 228 TV locales nationwide would be harmed by Nexstar consolidating two local newsrooms into one and firing reporters. She provided a University of Delaware study revealing when Nexstar has multiple stations in one TV market, they simply replicate the exact same news stories across all their stations. Nexstar attorney Alexander Okuliar countered that by consolidating stations they would provide more local news.
DIRECTV attorney Glenn D. Pomerantz told the Court the highest demand programming for any cable or satellite provider is local news and professional sports. But when one broadcaster controls multiple network stations in the same town, that broadcaster can essentially hold local viewers hostage by blacking out professional sports if DIRECTV and cable operators don’t pay ever increasing rates. Today, he said, if you can’t see one football game on local Sacramento FOX 40, you could turn to another on ABC10. This merger would allow Nexstar to simply black both stations out - until all consumers are forced to pay more for cable and satellite services. Nexstar’s Okuliar countered that the remedy is for consumers to use over the air antennas rather than Pay TV.
Judge Nunley wasn’t having any of it. April 17, the Court came down with a preliminary injunction saying that plaintiffs are “likely to succeed on the merits of its § 7 Clayton Act claim (which) prohibits mergers where 'the effect of such acquisition . . . may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly'.”
For now, TEGNA stations operating in areas from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Washington DC will essentially continue operating as they have until this case is adjudicated, even though the tegna.com says otherwise.
Apparently unwilling to slog through a months or years long lawsuit, Nexstar is appealing this case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nexstar must submit its brief to the higher court by May 20; DIRECTV and the Plaintiff States' attorneys must reply by June 17.
But Federal appeals are not based on merits of the case, but rather legal errors from the trial court. And here is where the story gets really interesting:
... To be continued ...
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