President Donald Trump is showing support for the pending Nexstar-Tegna merger.<\/p>\n
Trump took to Truth Social<\/a> on Saturday where he shared his thoughts on the deal, which is under review<\/a> by the FCC, writing in favor of the merger that he says \u201cwill help knock out the Fake News.\u201d<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n \u201cWe need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks. Letting Good Deals get done like Nexstar \u2013 Tegna will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level,\u201d the president wrote. \u201cThose that are opposed don\u2019t fully understand how good the concept of this Deal is for them, but they will in the future. GET THAT DEAL DONE! PRESIDENT DJT.\u201d<\/p>\n In August, Nexstar and Tegna entered a definitive agreement<\/a> for a merger, which would see the former company emerge with 265 local TV stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia and 132 of the country\u2019s 210 television DMAs, or Nielsen\u2019s Designated Market Areas. In total, this would cover 80 percent of U.S. TV households.<\/p>\n And while the merger hasn\u2019t been approved yet by the FCC, chairman Brendan Carr reshared Trump\u2019s social media post in support of said deal on Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump is exactly right,\u201d Carr wrote on X<\/a> Saturday. \u201cThe national networks like Comcast & Disney have amassed too much power. For years, they\u2019ve been pushing this Hollywood & New York programming all over the country with no real checks.\u201d<\/p>\n The FCC chairman concluded, \u201cLet\u2019s get it done and bring real competition to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Nexstar CEO Perry Sook<\/a> released a statement in November, where he argued, \u201cNexstar\u2019s acquisition of TEGNA will provide us with the scale necessary for local journalism to thrive amidst a media landscape that is dominated by Big Tech and the legacy media companies, enabling us to continue not only investing in high-quality journalism and local news, but in serving our local communities in the best possible way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo be clear, in an age of disinformation and political agendas, we are the anti-fake news,\u201d Sook said. \u201cOur news is delivered by trusted, familiar voices \u2014 journalists who live in the community \u2014 not a chatbot or social media influencers. And yet, we are prohibited from broadcasting trusted local news and programming to hundreds of communities across the country because of antiquated regulatory constraints. In an era where political discourse has turned increasingly polarized and violent, our democracy requires that Americans have easy access to reliable fact-based journalism and community forums to debate the issues of the day safely and respectfully.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump recently weighed in<\/a> on another major merger currently dominating Hollywood, that of Netflix and Paramount Skydance\u2019s battle to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, telling NBC News\u2018 Tom Llamas\u2019 that he \u201cshouldn\u2019t be involved\u201d in the fight for the company.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t been involved,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI must say, I guess I\u2019m considered to be a very strong president. I\u2019ve been called by both sides. It\u2019s the two sides, but I\u2019ve decided I shouldn\u2019t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n While Netflix announced<\/a> plans to acquire Warner Bros. for $82 million, Paramount has fought against this, subsequently launching a $108.7 billion hostile offer for the entire company. Warner Bros. subsequently denied Paramount\u2019s offer, which led the David Ellison-led company to file a lawsuit<\/a>, seeking more information about how they settled on accepting Netflix\u2019s offer.<\/p>\n Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos appeared<\/a> before the U.S. Senate\u2019s antitrust subcommittee on Tuesday, where he said that the company acquiring Warner Bros. would help save the studio from \u201cdeep-pocked tech companies trying to run away with the TV business.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump is showing support for the pending Nexstar-Tegna merger. Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,12158,23093,85,46,144019,26882,12521,73558],"class_list":["post-280175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-fake-news","tag-fcc","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-local-tv-stations","tag-nexstar","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-the-hollywood-reporter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}