Overview
- U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley issued a temporary restraining order Friday that pauses integration and requires Tegna to operate independently with its own control over retransmission talks, newsroom decisions, and other core functions.
- The court scheduled a preliminary‑injunction hearing for April 7 and directed Nexstar to file its legal brief by April 1 and a compliance report detailing hold‑separate steps by April 6.
- DirecTV and eight state attorneys general argue the merger would raise the retransmission fees that pay‑TV providers pay to carry local stations, increase blackout risks, cut local news, and reduce competition across overlapping markets.
- Regulators had cleared the transaction after the FCC’s Media Bureau granted a waiver of the 39% national TV ownership cap, but on Tuesday Senate Commerce leaders Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell questioned that delegated approval in a letter to Chairman Brendan Carr.
- The deal would combine roughly 259 full‑power stations after planned divestitures and reach close to 80% of U.S. TV households, a scale the judge said supports a presumption of likely antitrust harm.