Last week, as eight Democratic attorneys general, including Colorado’s Phil Weiser, sued to block a local TV merger that would affect local markets like Denver, Republican President Donald Trump’s FCC and DOJ gave their blessing to the deal.
At issue is a move by Nexstar, which owns KDVR FOX31 in Denver, to gobble up Tegna, which owns Denver’s KUSA 9NEWS. Nexstar said it had completed its acquisition.
News of the approval came just after Weiser announced that he had joined an antitrust lawsuit to try and block it.
The deal, which Trump currently supports, though he had earlier indicated his disapproval, would involve plenty of other local stations around the country.
In Denver, the consolidation would drastically reshape the local market. And according to Weiser, who is also running for governor, not in a good way.
“The proposed Nexstar/Tegna merger would give Nexstar control over an astonishing number of television stations across the nation, including KUSA and KDVR in Denver,” Weiser said in a statement on Thursday.
Such a merger, he added, would reduce competition in local news operations. Colorado viewers would have “less choice in news,” he said, and there would be less diversity in perspectives.
“Not only will this merger reduce the quality of local TV offerings, but consumers will also end up paying more for monthly cable TV or satellite service as a result,” Weiser said. “Competition in the local media market is critical for a healthy democracy, an informed citizenry, and affordable access to sports, news, and prime time shows. For these reasons, we are suing to block the Nexstar/Tegna merger.”
When these kinds of corporate consolidation deals go through, they typically do not lead to expanding newsrooms. They usually mean shrinking newsrooms for the sake of “efficiencies” or “synergies.”
From the 34-page lawsuit filed by the AGs:
…the Proposed Transaction will likely reduce competition in local news operations. Based on Nexstar’s pattern of newsroom closures and its recent statements to investors, the merged entity is likely to consolidate newsrooms of previously separate Big 4 stations, degrading the content and quality of local news broadcasts through the Big 4 stations. A recent study found that Nexstar is the worst offender in “news duplication” in local news, meaning Nexstar stations air local news content that is identical across multiple stations in one location.
In Denver, Tegna’s 9NEWS stands apart for its prolific accountability reporting, while Nexstar’s station in Denver, FOX31, doesn’t particularly get as much attention for that.
Media reported that Perry Sook, Nexstar’s chairman and CEO, said his company is “grateful” to Trump, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, and the DOJ “for recognizing the dynamic forces shaping the media landscape and allowing this transaction to move forward.”
For his part, Carr said on a recent podcast that he is launching a campaign that invites broadcasters to “highlight the great wins of the country and run patriotic programming — maybe starting off with the Pledge of Allegiance, which we used to do.”
The new ownership megadeal has led to anxiety among those at the Denver stations and among close media watchers who worry about potentially less watchdog coverage of politicians on TV.
9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark reported on the developments on air Thursday evening.
“Apart from the general comment that multiple stations in the same market will be combined, Nexstar has not said publicly what will happen with 9NEWS, or when,” he said.
Some of Colorado’s top Democratic leaders, from Gov. Jared Polis to U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Congressman Joe Neguse, and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, have condemned the takeover of 9NEWS.
On the right, Jon Caldara, who runs the libertarian-leaning nonprofit Independence Institute and plays an outsized role in conservative politics, policy, and media in Colorado, has criticized the deal from a conservative point of view.
In August, not long after news of the media consolidation attempt broke, Weiser told this newsletter that he would “closely review this proposed merger to determine if it will harm Coloradans.”
Last month, in an interview with this newsletter, Weiser, who is a former telecommunications lawyer, said he is against a move by the FCC to liberalize local TV mergers.
“That is a level of consolidation that is concerning, that warrants careful review,” he said. “And I am prepared to do that review. We’re doing it with other states because this affects other states, not just Colorado.”
Typically, TV takeovers like this might run afoul of federal regulations. But it is not a stretch to imagine Trump welcoming more local TV news consolidation — or any particular broadcast deal — if he believes it might somehow benefit him.
“The deal needed the approval of the Republican Trump administration’s FCC because the government had to waive rules that limit how many local stations that one company can own,” the Associated Press reported.
Proponents of local TV news consolidation, like the National Broadcasters Association, say the FCC allowing ownership deals to go through would offer local stations the scale to compete with large tech giants like YouTube or Netflix, which don’t have similar restrictions.
Last month, Weiser told this newsletter that he believed Trump was against the Nexstar-Tegna TV deal because of comments he had made about it — but he also acknowledged that the president can be on various sides of one issue.
“This is a more capricious, unpredictable, destructive administration than anything we’ve seen, so the normal processes where you actually have rational discourse, that’s out the window,” Weiser said. “So who knows what’s going to happen.”
Weiser noted that he had gone to court when two large grocery stores, Kroger and Albertsons, sought to merge. That consolidation deal did not move forward after a judge temporarily blocked it.
“I have shown my willingness and commitment to stop mergers that would harm Colorado,” he said. “And I have that authority as AG regardless of what the Trump administration does.”
Now he has joined attorneys general in seven other states. They filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California.
Despite the deal’s approval from the FCC and DOJ, a spokesperson for Weiser said on Friday that the state prosecutors are “pushing on” with their lawsuit.
Corey Hutchins is co-director of Colorado College’s Journalism Institute, reports on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and is a journalist for multiple news outlets. Subscribe to his Inside the News newsletter, here.