While the deal with Standard General buying Tegna has been hanging by a very thin thread, the thread has finally broke, and the deal is dead.

The FCC refused to sign off on the deal, and it will cost Standard General in a big way.

Tegna is entitled to a deal termination fee of $136 million from Standard General under the terms of the merger agreement.

Although, it remains to be seen if Standard General will fight that payout.

If you work at Tegna and were hoping that the company would be putting that 136 million back into the stations and maybe expanding staff, we have some bad news for you.

Tegna announced that they would be using their cash on hand to pay the shareholders a higher dividend and plans to make a huge stock buyback of Tegna shares.

Sources tell FTVLive that there has been talk at the top of Tegna about implementing possible layoffs if the deal did not go through.

FTVLive will have more on this soon.