dman748

On 4/20/2020 at 8:39 AM, TheRob said:

Here's Meredith's SEC filing, on the news that the company is slashing wages.

 

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/65011/000006501120000048/pre-releasepressrelease.htm

 

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/65011/000006501120000048/mdppre-release8xk.htm

On 4/20/2020 at 1:57 PM, tyrannical bastard said:

Terrible news for all of their employees, many who have been working hard during this crisis.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if Sinclair is next...they took a horrible gamble on the RSN purchases from FOX, lost a lot of carriage before the crisis, and then came the COVID-19 crisis and all of it's fallout. 

Now the RSN's are worthless without fresh content and less ways to watch them.

Meanwhile, the stations are chugging along producing content and many are working from home.

Do you guys think that perhaps Sinclair and Meredith both might go under? Sinclair is not a surprise here but its Meredith that's the bigger of the surprise here

19 minutes ago, scrabbleship said:

 

So the heritage Nexstar stations pre-2012 and some of the ex-Newport stations.

 

There would be 32 conflicts if you assume that WUSA/WDCW/WDVM wouldn't pass muster, going from markets as large as Houston to as small as San Angelo.

This is why I can't foresee Nexstar buying Tegna whole I can see them with a few of the Tegna stations but not the whole thing.

32 conflicts would be way too much for one company like Nexstar to handle.

1 minute ago, Nelson R. said:

Well we know Nexstar won’t be getting WCNC or WFMY...

Plus Nexstar would run into a lot of cap issues too even with the discount. If anything Nexstar may only want stations such as WFAA, KHOU, KENS and WUSA (technically Nexstar would have a triopoly but since WDVM doesn't cover the entire D.C. market that makes WUSA/WDCW permissible)

I seriously doubt Nexstar wants all of Tegna even if SCOTUS overrules the Third Circuit ruling on Pai's dereg moves.

Somehow we missed this one but the Tegna sale is still a possibility.

And not only that but Gray might actually come back to the table at a later date with an offer to acquire Tegna plus:

Nexstar may want part of Tegna (the only question is which ones does Nexstar actually want out of Tegna should they do that)

And don't rule out Standard Media acquiring Tegna either (yes, Standard Media) 

https://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/the-last-belle-at-the-ball-tegna-broadcastings-investment-appeal

I don't think the shareholder meeting will be the end of this stuff for Tegna

2 hours ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

And yet... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tegna-announces-strong-preliminary-first-100000110.html

 

 

As much as some are skeptical of Kim (not saying I am skeptical of him) honestly I think that if he gets an opportunity he should make a tender offer of taking over Tegna because now that I think about it I have to question their first quarter performance here how in the world can you have a "strong" 1st quarter results when:

1. Tegna is trading at just above $10 a share

2. Tegna has rebuffed at every buyout offer available over the last year and 3+ months

3. Furlough your own employees in the middle of the crisis

Clearly worthy of being called out by people and I can't imagine Kim being the only one questioning the first quarter results and if he is something is clearly wrong with that picture.

I'm starting to wonder too if the goal of the board at Tegna is to drive the company into bankruptcy? With this virus I think so. Without the virus I would seriously doubt that Tegna would go bankrupt but the furloughs coupled with this certain virus is leading me to believe that Tegna, unless they get taken over will go bankrupt.

1 hour ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

Uh, Apollo? Allen Media? AT&T is conflicted, so that's out.

Wouldn't both Apollo and Allen have to sell most if not all of it's own stations in order to get ABC?

2 hours ago, MidwestTV said:

From the Tegnaverse today:

 

https://www.tegna.com/tegna-applauds-iss-rejection-of-soohyung-kim-and-his-campaign-to-replace-leadership-of-tegna-board/

 

Quoted are a few paragraphs I found interesting. The presser has a lot more.

 

That's the problem right there, Tegna is focused on getting through the pandemic before thinking about selling but yet Kim is over here saying "Tegna should sell now."

It's becoming clear that the pathway to getting all 4 of the board seats is going to be very difficult for Standard General and if they're lucky they may get one of them on there.

The question becomes can there be a compromise that would finally put an end to this proxy war and is getting maybe one or two of Kim's nominees on the board in exchange for Kim himself, along with his other 2 nominees not getting a board seat feasible? I know that's not what Tegna wants to do but as much as this proxy fight is interesting to watch and follow, however there's got to be an ending to this and knowing Kim he's not going to be satified until he gets what he wants so I think the only way how this is going to end is a compromise, the problem is neither side is showing any interest in making concessions here.

59 minutes ago, Georgie56 said:

This weekend, it's WGCL's turn.

Somebody didn't check with their editior or somebody didn't know that the W/K originates along the Mississippi River 

Quote

CBS’s owned stations have helped out with anchoring and producing the weekend program, including WTVT Dallas and KCBS Los Angeles.

5 hours ago, jase said:

AT&T could be the perfect home for ABC & Freeform if Disney were to sale them. As far as rebuilding the sports division, that wouldn’t be necessary given that that could be controlled by Turner Sports with sports currently airing on TBS and TruTV moving over to ABC. Then, over time, picking up more sports rights.

 

Honestly, I could see Disney selling a lot of things over the next 5 years... (All things ABC (broadcast network, tv production arms, etc..) Freeform, Nat Geo, Blue Sky (do they really need  3 animation studios?), Lucasfilms (yeah..I said it) along with their stake in A+E networks and maybe some 20th Television properties.

The only sport I can maybe see moving over to ABC from Turner is MLB, everything else will probably stay on Turner (as far as sports rights is concerned)

Another alternative Idea would involve 2 scenarios:

1. Disney has it's non-broadcasting assets as well as ESPN, Inc. while ABC takes everything (including the FX, NatGeo, A&E as well as the TV production units)

2. Disney keeps everything including ABC, while ESPN and A&E is spun off to form a new company.

Somehow I think scenario #1 looks more likely than scenario #2

Here's my thinking if Disney were to sell ABC:

I can only think of a few companies that would have of any interest in buying ABC

Discovery

Liberty Media

AT&T (Warner Media)

The only other option I can see is the split of Disney where some of the former 21CF assets (i.e. 20th Century Pictures, Cable Channels (including ESPN) all make up Disney while ABC, Freeform, O&Os, Some of the TV studio productions (such as DADT) it's news and sports divisions all make up whatever it'd become under ABC

The bigger wild card in all of this is going to be sports under any scenario ABC is going to have to rebuild its sports division from scratch which would mean continuing the partnership with ESPN until a Sports Department can be reestablished.

7 hours ago, hmaxhanson said:

Funny thing we many of us thought Scripps would go voiceover-less with the new opens, but so far the only one who's done that is the pilot station (WTXL)!

My educated guess on that one is that Scripps likely left it up to the stations to decide on the V/Os and it was likely in the case of WTXL that it was management of WTXL opted to not have a voiceover artist and that it wasn't forced upon by Cincinnati

And KIVI/KSAW has the graphics here's the open: 

2 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:

 

The Dispatch stations were supposedly going to be paid for out of earnings. When you do things that way, it's almost the same way the Wolfe's did things. You're just farming money.

Exactly, to me Tegna at minimum is farming out money almost to the point of hemoraging money for example, Tegna bought the KFMB stations (Radio/TV) for $325 million, I'm not exactly sure how much the KFMB stations was actually worth but in my eyes I think Tegna overpaid for the KFMB stations and on top of that they only sold the KFMB radio stations for only $5 million dollars.

My question is how can anyone justify paying over $300 million to acquire a large piece of property (TV and Radio stations) yet turn around and only sell the radio stations for $5 million? I don't think you can justify that in my opinion.

1 minute ago, CircleSeven said:

 

The DOJ only told Nexstar to divest WEVV, because that would've gave them too much control in Evansville with WEHT/WTVW. WEVV was originally proposed to be ran by a new female-ran shell Rocky Creek Broadcasting. But it was eventually sold to DuJuan McCoy's Bayou City Broadcasting with no sharing agreement attached.

 

It was Wheeler and the Democratic-ran FCC that didn't act on the original Mission proposal because at the time Wheeler had a strict guidance on scrutinizing deals with sharing arrangements. So Nexstar amended that application to assign those stations to Marshall. 

 

So basically Nexstar is just transferring the Marshall stations to Mission.

On 4/9/2020 at 4:52 AM, CircleSeven said:

 

 

So follow up.

 

Last year, Pluria Marshall filed a lawsuit against Nexstar. Months later, Marshall filed for Chapter 11.

 

Now by a bankruptcy court order, Marshall is going to sell his three stations to Mission Broadcasting.

So let me ask this, did Mission try to buy the stations from ComCorp the first time but the DOJ told them no? If so then I have to wonder what Nexstar is thinking because if the DOJ did in fact tell Nexstar they couldn't use Mission to acquire KPEJ/KMSS and they're trying that again that might raise a red flag in the DOJ's eyes

1 hour ago, Al-SA-TX said:

Spoiler alert: there isn't a single bank that is going to back/finance a transaction as big as what TEGNA is worth because of the current pandemic that has essentially caused our economy to collapse. Which is why Gray and Apollo dropped their bids. Nobody had to jump through hoops for anything.

 

And yes, it was COVID-19 that ended those talks.

It was part of it but not the entire reason why Gray and Apollo walked out. They could've provided the financing for themselves but there were so many hoops to jump through just to reach Tegna itself it just wasn't worth their time.

I'm sure both are waiting on Kim to takeover or at least get a more friendlier board that would allow them to make a deal even under COVID conditions but, most of all under better conditions within Tegna's board.

Tegna gave us an example of how deals do not materialize.

And besides even without COVID, I think any deal involving Tegna wouldn't have happened until the proxy fight with Standard was resolved and quite frankly Kim further cemented it by this proxy war. In other words there would've been no sale for Tegna at least for awhile anyway (not until the proxy war gets resolved)

5 hours ago, CBS11 Weatherboy said:

TEGNA doesn't have to sell it's their decision and it looks like Kim and Standard General was doing something they weren't suppose to do with the stock trades.

Couple things.

First, we don't know if Kim had actually engaged in activities that were illegal, Tegna is just looking intro it is all they're doing right now.

Second, you do have a point about Tegna not having to sell if they don't want to but my issue is I haven't seen any legitimate reasons for why Tegna shouldn't sell other than the obvious ones. In fact looking at the PDF file, Apollo had actually approached Tegna as early as in early 2019 around the time Apollo had announced acquisition of Cox, somehow not only was it not reported on until last August. So for Tegna to go just over a year of reports and somehow for them to just brush it by is not very good business for anybody.

Any good business (Media and otherwise) would've gone to the table and talked about the bids and if things work out towards a deal can be made, great. If not, fine. But instead of coming to the table to talk to Apollo about the bids like what Tegna should have done, Tegna and their board decided to not only brush it off any of those talks but then acquired the rejects from Nexstar and Tribune that the combined company had to sell at a price that just isn't reasonable. That's like them paying a TV station company to acquire the WXXX stations for $300 million yet only sell for only say $85 million. Those are figures similar to that example that Tegna has came up with that (other than the WTOL/KWES acquisition and maybe the Dispatch acquisition) just doesn't add up.

Also whoever said I was "clamoring" for sale that is completely fabricated and music and the graphics should be left out of the conversation and besides I don't even think the problem is those things anymore I think the problem is the people running Tegna they have become nothing more but obstructionists to any and all deals that makes good sense and should be done with a fair and due process. Unfortunately we're not seeing that on the part of Tegna or its board and quite frankly I can't blame Gray and Apollo from walking away the way they did. No company should ever have to jump through hoops just to talk to them about a deal and that's what were seeing on the part of Tegna, especially at a time when were dealing with a challenging time that were in.

I think @channel2 was spot on when he asked about Tegna not wanting to sell and that I think was spot on. However, it wasn't COVID that doomed Tegna's sale talks it was Tegna itself that doomed the sale talks and they did it to themselves.

4 hours ago, GoldenShine9 said:

 

I also got the impression that Hilton Howell's letter was a middle finger to the Tegna board.

Exactly my thoughts, I think Gray pulled out of the bid for Tegna for reasons other than COVID-19 yes I know they said COVID was the reason but as the weeks gone on, the more I think about the reasons Gray pulled out of the running for Tegna, the more I think it wasn't neccessarily to do with COVID it had more to do with the Tegna board's arrogance and resistance for not selling, as Standard General pointed out in their presentation

Quote

TEGNA appears to have squandered the opportunity to maximize the value of shareholders' investment through a sale of the Company in a previously vibrant M&A market. Worse, TEGNA appears to have engaged in a series of defensive actions that impeded transformative M&A and destroyed shareholder value. Had TEGNA actively pursued a strategic transaction in early 2019, we believe it could have converted strong interest in a premium-priced acquisition from multiple credible parties into a deal that would have created significant value for shareholders. Instead, TEGNA made large, expensive, debt-fueled acquisitions and issued non-callable bonds with high breakage costs—driving up the cost to acquire the Company and potentially limiting its universe of possible buyers. Only after Standard General moved to replace a minority of TEGNA's underperforming directors did TEGNA begin to engage with interested parties. Even then, TEGNA appears to have acted hesitantly and imposed unreasonable conditions on potential bidders, including, according to media reports, demanding proof of financing amid an unprecedented health and capital markets crisis. Consequently, TEGNA was unable to capitalize on any of four expressions of interest at $20 per share: two potential suitors have reportedly dropped out of contention, while two others have not been permitted to conduct due diligence. As a result of the actions and omissions of the current TEGNA Board, the window to maximize the value of shareholders' investment in TEGNA may have closed.

And now it looks like an investigation into the stock sell swapping involving Tegna and Standard General may be forthcoming and it's being looked into at this time.

30 minutes ago, TSSZNews said:

 

I'm not entirely convinced the current ad market is going to back that promise up in a month. Political can only get you so far and that almost certainly won't ramp up again until late Summer - and that's assuming we're out of this by then.

 

"At the present time" is the key qualifier here.

@Myron Falwell brought up a good point on Discord at how the media industry if this virus persists well into July and August and it never fully goes away enough to where its deemed safe to reopen everything may have to be bailled out by the government. I hope it doesn't come down to it, but it's certainly a possibility here that what Tegna did today may spread to other media companies down the road

5 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

If anything, the news employees having to go to work in this situation should be exempted from these furloughs.  They are on the front lines and putting themselves on the line to inform the public.  Even those who are working from home maybe using personal resources that would normally be reimbursed under regular conditions.

Exactly and I think Gray is doing it the right way by recognizing that their employees should be taken care of. Tegna on the other hand, is doing it the wrong way.

What Lougee needs and should worry about is making sure that his employees are taken care of and paid in full, they don't need their paychecks reduced under any circumstances

1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Sadly, this could be the case for many more companies across the media industry.  Especially those who are highly leveraged and count on live sports programming to make them lots of money...

Even worse are the retail workers who have been indefinitely sidelined by their own parent companies and government bodies shutting down "non-essential" business.

Gray Television respectfully disagrees, in fact they have come out and essentially said no they're not going to do layoffs

P.S. Link is behind the paywall

1 hour ago, Webovision said:

so...

 

what is with your obsession with mr. Kim???

 

never see anyone saying "Leon Black is trying to take over Cox"... same for Dave Lougee... "Dave Lougee is buying up Raycom..."

 

mr. Kim is the only executive you all mention by name...

 

hope it's not race related...

 

just saying...

First off it's not an obsession it's a simple fact that Kim has taken on an investment into Tegna and he doesn't want to waste his 11.8% in Tegna, period.

And as typical you just had to bring up a topic that doesn't need to get brought up that will derail this thread so I suggest we stop that "race" thing now.

3 hours ago, Al-SA-TX said:

I can't wait for all this to blow up in Soo Kim's face. 

We'll find out April 30th, but Kim is not deterred by anything not even COVID-19 is slowing down his quest to either get Tegna to sell or takeover the company and he's NOT going to let Tegna's rejection of his nominees stop him from getting what he wants. Period.

32 minutes ago, 8Viewer said:

And for something completely different....

 

Is Tegna's WTSP getting a new logo?  Noticed a different design on their YT channel. 

 

Website hasn't changed though. Looks like KGTV circa 1970's/80s. 

I got some WBNS vibes in that "10" although it's not exactly in the style of WBNS's logo.