More Interest in Buying Tegna

It looks like the buyers are lining up for the chance to buy underperforming Tegna and their stations.

Now it appears that Byron Allen is showing interest in the Tegna group.

So far, we've seen Apollo Global Management subsidiary Cox Media Group sniffing around Tegna, as well as Gray Television.

Most recently, Apollo acquired Cox Media Group, consisting of local TV and radio stations, and the acquisition of Northwest Broadcasting, and retaining the Cox Media Group name.

Gray Television has acquired stations recently, and their most notable acquisition being former Raycom Media stations, and 4 conflict markets that saw stations divested to Tegna and Scripps.

Tegna is the former broadcast arm of Gannett Company. Since 2015, Tegna added stations in San Diego, Indianapolis, Columbus (Ohio), plus 2 Gray-Raycom spinoffs, and 7 Nexstar-Tribune spinoffs.

Should the Tegna group stations be sold, the Allen-Tegna or Cox-Tegna seem to have the least conflicts with overlap.

Allen-Tegna has at least 1 conflict we're aware of, which is Huntsville.

Cox-Tegna has 6, which are Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Memphis, Seattle, and Spokane.

Gray-Tegna prospect has numerous overlap conflicts, which includes Bangor, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbia, Huntsville, Knoxville, Louisville, Memphis, New Orleans, Quad Cities, and Tucson, to name a few places.

Plus some non-conflicts would likely have to be divested to stay below the FCC's current 39% national cap threshold.

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