Tegna spent a lot of money to try and keep their current board members in place and it seems to have paid off.

The Tegna shareholders voted to keep their 12 board directors. Standard General which is the largest shareholder in Tegna was looking for a few seats at the Tegna board table, but Tegna spent millions to make sure that did not happen.

Tegna also tried to keep their shareholders happy by raising their stock dividend to 7 cents a share.

Tegna will pay out their first dividend to shareholders shortly after the first round of employee furloughs end. I’m sure Tegna employees will be happy to know that some of their pay that they gave back to the company will help pay the Tegna stockholders.

As for Standard General, They never thought that Tegna should have started furloughing their employees. “As we have said before, we are very concerned that the company is asking employees to take unpaid furloughs. While we commend management for taking pay cuts of their own, we note that our public peers have not asked their frontline staff to bear such burdens. We have heard the anecdotes of trusted anchors off-the-air during May sweeps and a chief meteorologist missing on-air amidst tornado season. We assure you that, as the Company’s largest shareholder, Standard General will continue to vigilantly monitor how TEGNA compensates its local staff and upper management and hold the Company accountable,” Standard General said in a release.

But for now, Tegna CEO Dave Lougee has the board he wants and it appears he has free reign to run Tegna as he sees fit.

In other words, the comedians as news anchors are not going away anytime soon.