Tegna purchase could lead to layoffs or consolidation in St. Louis newsrooms

Yesterday’s announcement that local media powerhouse Nexstar is purchasing Tegna raises a lot of questions about the future of local television news in St. Louis. Nexstar is the parent company of FOX 2. Tegna is the parent of KSDK Channel 5, the area’s NBC affiliate.

News of the acquisition is said to have sent shockwaves through the KSDK newsroom. Other industry observers took a grim view. 

“There’s going to be, as they call it, ‘enhanced operational efficiencies,’ which in this case are buzzwords for layoffs. There’s no doubt,” says Scott Diener, who worked for decades in local newsrooms across the country before retiring as executive news director for KMOV Channel 4 this summer. 

“In most cases, you don’t need two general managers,” Diener continues. “You don’t need two news directors. You don’t necessarily need two general sales managers.” He stressed that he has no inside information about this merger and the details have yet to shake out. But he is no stranger to two networks in the same market being owned by the same entity. For 10 years, he was the news director for the Los Angeles CBS affiliate and an independent station owned by the same company, operating out of the same space. 

Nexstar currently owns about 200 stations throughout the country. Tegna owns 68. The acquisition is not yet a done deal, a statement from Nexstar said. It still needs to be approved by regulators and Tegna’s shareholders, though Nexstar is paying a 31 percent premium on the smaller company’s stock price.

Nexstar could wind up running a triopoly in St. Louis. In addition to FOX 2, they already own KPLR-STL 11. Right now, those two networks for the most part air the same local news content, packaged differently and airing at different times so that channels don’t compete against each other for eyeballs. 

Not long ago, it would have been unthinkable for a company that already owned two networks in a market to acquire a third. But recently broadcasters have been lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to loosen regulations so they can better compete with tech giants like Meta and Google. Regulations that limited broadcasters from owning only one of the “big three” networks as well as a smaller one in any given market are perceived as likely to give way. 

“But now, from some court rulings and the FCC under the Trump administration, basically it’s on the verge of just opening all that up,” says Diener. “Broadcasters are moving forward as if it’s already done.”

The Nexstar press release announcing the acquisition states that the move will allow the company to expand its presence in some markets, mentioning specifically Atlanta, Phoenix, Seattle, and Minneapolis—but, perhaps concerningly for local news junkies, not St. Louis. 

KSDK’s political editor Mark Maxwell struck an optimistic tone on social media, writing, “While there’s a lot to learn and consider about what this will mean for journalism, the press release promises greater ability to compete with Big Tech. Let’s hope that’s true as our society is awash in their swirling sea of disinformation.”

KSDK alum and current Washington D.C. politico Jacob Long struck a more pessimistic tone, writing on X, “More concentrated power over who controls the information a vast majority of Americans receive does not feel great.”

Diener says it’s not impossible that some of the money saved via those “enhanced operational efficiencies” could be put toward investigative reporting—at least, that is the hope. 

“I’m not privy to what they plan to do, but in most cases, if the mayor is having a news conference, you can send one reporter and maybe a photographer to it, and that’s going to take care of the story—it’s going to work for all three entities,” says Diener. “You might graphically make it different, framework it differently. It’s on at different times. But in most cases they’re not going to send two different crews.” 

Theoretically, as long as both stations continue to operate fully, that could mean FOX 2 covers the press conference and KSDK digs into a different story, with each broadcast to the others’ viewers. But it’s also possible that the consolidation means the mayor’s press conference gets covered by just one reporter, and the other no longer has a job. (For what it’s worth, the two Los Angeles stations under the same roof that Diener managed up until 2016 are still operating as a duopoly, rather than the smaller one fading away or the two completely merging.) 

Among the many other open questions is what will happen to KSDK’s planned move from downtown to the Cheltenham neighborhood near Forest Park, which the station previously announced after 43 years downtown. FOX 2 has a sizable headquarters in Maryland Heights. KSDK leaders did not respond to a message seeking clarity. 

Nexstar expects the deal is expected to close by the second half of 2026.