(C) Tennessee Lookout
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Consolidation of TV station ownership in state limits options for Tennesseans • Tennessee Lookout [1]
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Date: 2025-09-10
Rarely do we think about who owns the local television stations licensed to serve our communities, but a recent proposed merger of two big TV owners would have huge implications for Tennessee and the rest of the nation. The plan also demonstrates the folly of excessive deregulation allowing for the growth of media behemoths.
When you watch CBS programming on WREG in Memphis, you are not watching a CBS-owned station. That station is owned by Nexstar, a huge media player that currently owns or operates more than 200 television stations, reaching more than 212 million people across 116 markets. Nexstar simply has a business deal to carry CBS programs into the Memphis market — by its transmitter tower using the public airwaves, or indirectly by others bringing it into your home by satellite, fiber optic cable or wireless distribution.
The ABC affiliate in Memphis (WATN) and the NBC affiliate in Knoxville (WBIR) both are owned and operated by Tegna, a chain of 64 stations in 51 U. S. markets, spun off from Gannett in 2015. Nexstar now has declared it wants to buy out Tegna. That would put the two previously mentioned Memphis stations under the same ownership; it would do the same in Knoxville with WBIR and ABC affiliate WATE.
This level of concentration almost by definition will harm the competitiveness of the local TV advertising market and public service. When newsrooms merge or disappear, we as audience members lose because there are fewer reporters and producers suggesting, researching, and presenting news accounts of local events in Memphis, Knoxville, and in many other spots around the nation.
Scott Barker of Knoxville’s online news site Compass also pointed out the harm to local broadcast employees. He wrote, “[T]he prospect of becoming Nexstar employees may not fill WBIR staff with glee. The company is notorious in the industry for low wages.”
A recent report from the National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians found that the “majority (62%) of Nexstar workers earn less than a living wage for their metro area for a single person without children and 89% earn less than a living wage for their metro area for a single person with one child.”
The same report declared that “Nexstar pays 22% less than the median wage, on average, for the most common occupations surveyed. Workers report that they have to skip breaks and often work in understaffed departments. Meanwhile, Nexstar is very profitable and seeks to grow through more acquisitions of local broadcast stations.”
To make its acquisitions possible, Nexstar wants to waive or eliminate the few remaining Federal Communications Commission rules limiting concentration of ownership. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals this past summer threw out one FCC rule blocking one owner from acquiring two of the top four stations in any market. The FCC still has a rule that caps a single broadcast owner from controlling stations whose combined signals reach more than 39% of the U.S. population. The FCC, however, is in the middle of administrative procedures to wipe out that limit, effectively doing the bidding of Nexstar whose $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna would leave the combined company reaching 80% of U.S. households.
Another cautionary Tennessee story about concentrated ownership also can be demonstrated through Sinclair Broadcast Group. It owns Fox affiliate WZTV in Nashville, plus both WRCB (NBC) and WTVC (ABC/Fox) in Chattanooga. It also owns WCYB (NBC) in the Tri-Cities market (Johnson City, Kingsport, Bristol) and operates the Fox affiliate there for another company.
Sinclair is a very large owner/operator of TV licenses in the U.S. The latest tally is 185 stations in 85 markets. Most local TV news is remarkably apolitical. Station ownership is more interested in the green of profitability than red v. blue political disputes. Sinclair, however, is a big player in extreme right-wing politics.
During the 2016 campaign, Sinclair, in a deal trumpeted by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, ordered its stations to run more favorable stories about then-candidate Donald Trump. Sinclair went through a period of “must-run” commentaries from Trump operative Boris Epshteyn. Sinclair also insists its newsrooms air material on conspiracies like the “deep state”’ and voice warnings about “fake news.” More recently, Nexstar has mandated its stations run stories pushing broadcast deregulation.
Sinclair’s duplicity was exposed dramatically in 2018 when Deadspin put together a video of dozens of Sinclair anchors reading word-for-word a required commentary slamming other news outlets for pushing personal bias.
Broadcast station owners for years have crusaded against nearly all regulation. They note that no such regulation exists for newspapers, magazines, online forums or sites. Anyone can start a news web site and many of us would be repulsed at the First Amendment complications of restricting who could. TV stations, however, have made billions over decades using a limited scarce public resource, public airwaves. It isn’t too much to insist that they owe some minimal obligations to those of us without access to such airwaves. That can include technical standards for signal strength, but also some ownership limits so this valuable public resource is not swallowed up by a handful of operators. The cheapness of Nexstar and the partisanship of Sinclair only serve to highlight the obvious dangers.
Tennesseans with concerns can call or write the FCC to comment about the FCC keeping its limits on the percentage of U.S. audience any one station owner may reach. It’s a matter that stretches from Memphis to Knoxville in terms of constricting the number of voices operating television stations.
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