Standard General to acquire Tegna for $8.6 Billion

[mre29 1513]

1 hour ago, MidwestTV said:

It would be quite the calamity if, in the end, Tegna ended up buying the Standard General shops for cheap. Just a fun thought - not trying to dive into Speclatron.

 

That would actually be hilarious.

 

[Megatron81 256]

TEGNA should sue Soo Kim for $1Billion dollars.

[Adam MadMan 285]

1 hour ago, Megatron81 said:

TEGNA should sue Soo Kim for $1Billion dollars.

Assuming they wouldn't just get bought out before the deal even went to court, like Tribune did with the Sinclair suit, which quickly died down after Nexstar came in.

 

Then again, it's hard to think of any potential single buyer for the company that isn't already capped or is just unlikely to be interested. But that's a conversation for Speculatron.

[DirtyHarry 727]

2 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:

Assuming they wouldn't just get bought out before the deal even went to court, like Tribune did with the Sinclair suit, which quickly died down after Nexstar came in.

 

Then again, it's hard to think of any potential single buyer for the company that isn't already capped or is just unlikely to be interested. But that's a conversation for Speculatron.

 

You guys act like any of those companies are great. Tegna is like the modern day Tiffany Network compared to the rest of them.

[Adam MadMan 285]

Soo Kim: "Am I so corrupt and hypocritical? No, it's the FCC who is wrong.""

Edited April 24, 2023 by Adam MadMan

[GoldenShine9 1512]

43 minutes ago, Adam MadMan said:

Soo Kim: "Am I so corrupt and hypocritical? No, it's the FCC who is wrong.""

 

Wrong. You did NOTHING to solve any of the complications, Mr. Kim. This was a hostile takeover with the help of another company who is *already in* some of these markets, and helped by foreign money.

[ColtFromGulfcoast 707]

4 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:

Soo Kim: "Am I so corrupt and hypocritical? No, it's the FCC who is wrong.""

Sir, all y'all had to do was divest conflicts and be honest. 

 

Somebody fetch me my violin. 

[MidwestTV 1229]

4 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:

Soo Kim: "Am I so corrupt and hypocritical? No, it's the FCC who is wrong.""

"“If it could happen to us it could, happen to anybody,” Kim said."

It did. To Sinclair when trying to buy Tribune. Not the exact same with a hearing involved, but it isn't the first time a deal has died.

 

"“I think that control over news is something that U,S, citizens should not allow the government to have."

But that's not what the FCC is doing? They're not telling any local station what news to cover and how. If they were, they would've stopped that Sinclair "this is a threat to our democracy" crap from a several years back.

 

"Sometimes — against the advice of his lawyers and lobbyists..."

So he's a headache not just to the FCC, but even to his own lawyers and lobbyists. Sounds like a bad client. I wonder if those folks are almost glad the deal will die so they don't have to deal with him anymore.

[mre29 1513]

7 hours ago, ColtFromGulfcoast said:

Somebody fetch me my violin. 

 

It's, uh.... it's already being used.

 

 

[Rusty Muck 4366]

On 4/23/2023 at 4:02 PM, MidwestTV said:

It would be quite the calamity if, in the end, Tegna ended up buying the Standard General shops for cheap. Just a fun thought - not trying to dive into Speclatron.

Certainly WLNE and KLKN could benefit from being in a larger chain with more resources at their disposal. Ditto if Apollo were to also sell WFXT to Tegna (which might be a good deal for both parties tbh).

[GoldenShine9 1512]

16 hours ago, ColtFromGulfcoast said:

Sir, all y'all had to do was divest conflicts and be honest. 

 

Somebody fetch me my violin. 

 

Plus they had to fully resolve the foreign money questions, rather than try to hide them.

[T.L. Hughes 881]

FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Hinckley Halprin has suspended her review of Standard General’s acquisition of Tegna “until further notice”. Standard requested that review be expedited before its May 22 financing deadline. As noted by Broadcasting & Cable:

 

Quote

Halprin said that since the deal may crater before such a review could be completed, why put the parties through the motions — literally and figuratively — “when the underlying transactions might not survive past May 22, 2023.”

 

Edited May 1, 2023 by T.L. Hughes

[nathannah 2402]

In the immortal words of Don Meredith...Turn out the lights...the party's over.

[DirtyHarry 727]

21 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Hinckley Halprin has suspended her review of Standard General’s acquisition of Tegna “until further notice”. Standard requested that review be expedited before its May 22 financing deadline. As noted by Broadcasting & Cable:

 

 

What's that song? Na, na, na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey ... goodbye!

 

 

 

I love the creativity of the competitive marketplace. I love that we are a country where people like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs could create something out of nothing.

 

That's not what these clowns are doing. They're taking somebody else's creation to starve it of money and then leave it broken and in a ditch on the side of the road. Sorry for the mixed metaphors. Not that I like government any better than these clowns, but in this case they are doing the right thing.

 

Bye-bye Sue kim. I hope this folly cost you hundreds of millions of dollars.

[MidwestTV 1229]

It ain't over yet. The FCC seems to be giving it one last chance to make its case. Standard has made a last minute effort to sate the FCC and get them to approve the deal by Monday, May 22, when it officially dies.

 

The Seeking Alpha article links to a response from Standard General about the FCC's concerns. Among other things is Standard making its depositions to the DOJ public, waive its rights to apply after-acquired retransmission rights, and memorandums of understandings with the various Tegna unions and civil rights groups.

 

Most interesting to me is they're now promising to not layoff anyone for at least three years instead of two, and supposedly will give all stations +20% budgets within three years of closing.

 

From the release:

Quote

Standard General has extended its commitment to maintain newsroom jobs for at least three years (extended from two years previously) – this commitment covers all NewsGuild-NABET employees at TEGNA. Standard General has also committed to increasing local news budgets and news programming by 20% across TEGNA-owned stations within 3 years of closing. Standard General has submitted various documents that detail these commitments to the FCC.

 

The clock is still ticking, but it's inching closer and closer to midnight.

Edited May 18, 2023 by MidwestTV

[GoldenShine9 1512]

8 minutes ago, MidwestTV said:

It ain't over yet. The FCC seems to be giving it one last chance to make its case. Standard has made a last minute effort to sate the FCC and get them to approve the deal by Monday, May 22, when it officially dies.

 

The Seeking Alpha article links to a response from Standard General about the FCC's concerns. Among other things is Standard making its depositions to the DOJ public, waive its rights to apply after-acquired retransmission rights, and memorandums of understandings with the various Tegna unions and civil rights groups.

 

Most interesting to me is they're now promising to not layoff anyone for at least three years instead of two, and supposedly will give all stations +20% budgets within three years of closing.

 

From the release:

 

The clock is still ticking, but it's inching closer and closer to midnight.

 

It still does NOTHING to either solve the conflicts in ownership in 5 markets, nor does it settle the issue of foreign money being involved. They could promise 10 years and that wouldn't work.

[DirtyHarry 727]

He's just blowing smoke. Again.

 

The FCC isn't going to reopen the door on this. They made their decision. It's going to the judge.

[TennTV1983 802]

2 hours ago, GoldenShine9 said:

 

It still does NOTHING to either solve the conflicts in ownership in 5 markets, nor does it settle the issue of foreign money being involved. They could promise 10 years and that wouldn't work.

 

That's all Soo Kim had to do was unload the conflicts, but no. He wants to be stubborn like a mule with how he's handling this.

 

Edited May 18, 2023 by TennTV1983

[mre29 1513]

3 hours ago, GoldenShine9 said:

It still does NOTHING to either solve the conflicts in ownership in 5 markets, nor does it settle the issue of foreign money being involved.

 

And the FCC still isn't directly addressing those two issues, is it?

 

I mean, yes, potential job losses and retransmission consent fees are serious issues, but they're issues 3 and 4 here. The ownership conflicts and foreign money should be dealt with first, and I'm amazed that the FCC doesn't appear to be officially saying anything about them.

 

[Big Rollo Smokes 260]

Not directly related to Tegna/Standard General, but Soo Kim has a lot of irons in various fires.

 

He appeared on Spectrum News NY1 here in NYC last night (5/17) talking about his interest in getting a license from New York State to build a casino on the site of the Trump Links Golf Course in the Bronx. For those who know the area, the course is at the foot of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, and between a municipal park and a cemetery.

 

Folks around this way would love to see Trump Links go away. For Kim, the odds are better to land the license for the casino than they are to get the Tegna deal approved. And even a Bronx casino is a longshot by itself.

[MidwestTV 1229]

Congressional Republicans are asking the FCC IG to investigate the FCC's handling of the deal.

 

I also discovered there's an entire website making the case for why the deal should happen. What I found funny was the part where they say under their leadership there's been an increase of 40,000 hours of local news...which I'm assuming is from the past 20 years under companies that no longer exist. They certainly haven't added that much news to the four stations they currently own.

[Adam MadMan 285]

Kathy Feng of Common Cause has written a guest article about why the deal is a horrible thing for the industry.

[Yankees4life 558]

5 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:

Kathy Feng of Common Cause has written a guest article about why the deal is a horrible thing for the industry.

We don't even need an article. Its pretty common knowldege that having basically having 2 mega corporations run by one entity is not good

Edited May 19, 2023 by Yankees4life

[DirtyHarry 727]

It's May 22nd. We should know by the end of the day.

[CircleSeven 1955]

2 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:

It's May 22nd. We should know by the end of the day.

If I remember from Sinclair-Tribune, Tribune announced the termination of that sale the day after the outside date (and of course filing that lawsuit). 

 

All that wasteful time trying to convince the FCC to change their minds and rescind that HDO, what Soo should have done was to go to the [incumbent] Tegna board and beg them not to sue him for all this waste of time.

 

If you don't hear anything today, you'll definitely hear something tomorrow.