FCC hurdle delays Standard General’s bid for Tegna

Welcome back, we're a few minutes till the opening bell. Let's get to some movers we're watching. Tegna is one of them. Look at the plunge in those shares down 24% as the FCC orders a hearing on Standard General's bid to purchase the company delayed with concern that the transaction may trigger price increases for consumers. So basically, the FCC was considering whether to approve this deal. And now they've said that they are holding off on it. They're asking for closer review, according to this statement, to ensure that this transaction does not anti-competitively raise prices or put jobs in local newsrooms at risk.

This is an owner of 64 television stations. Yeah, and we got all the elements leading up to this decision for months now. You had then, or the previous, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighing in on the deal. This was last autumn, basically, where in a letter they had also warned about the potential impact on some of everything from the consumer prices that you're paying, the jobs as well that would be impacted by this because there typically would be some type of, or at least they had seen in the past, the propensity for there to be a sweeping layoff that would take place after this deal was consummated as well. So they wanted to safeguard against that. But they had described this within Washington, DC, described this as piping in news produced in Washington to fill time on local newscasts as a public interest benefit. And some of the regulators were pushing back against that as well, swiftly there.

So you heard about that from several lawmakers last year in Q3. Yeah, and the unions have been against this deal as well. They have pointed to other hedge fund purchases of news outlets and pointed to negative impacts from that. There was some really interesting commentary from the analysts over at Benchmark Co. saying the FCC is effectively killing the transaction. And they say, if you read between the lines of this FCC release, the FCC both believes that something illicit is going on with the deal structure and that standard general effectively lied in their responses, bringing up the non-negotiable topic of candor. Now, again, that's the words of Benchmark, not mine, but still that's pretty dramatic to say, you know, it does sound, analysts are effectively saying this deal is not happening.

Right, right. And that's what the stock price is saying. Exactly. And that's speaking volumes here this morning as well. So continuing to watch that one as we get closer to the start of today's trading activity.

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