Who Owns the Media: TEGNA

TEGNA 🐔🐔

Capitulation Rank: Compromising
Category: Broadcasting & Entertainment 
Market Cap: $2.886 billion

This local-television conglomerate hired Google and NBCUniversal veteran Michael Steib as its new CEO in August 2024. Steib hopes that the Trump administration will usher in a period of industry consolidation, and he has told reporters of TEGNA’s interest in seeing media-ownership rules loosen so it can participate in the resulting spectrum grab. 

The fate of smaller independent TV owners hangs in the balance. One analyst told The Hollywood Reporter: “You have your Sinclairs and Nexstars and TEGNAs, and then you also have some station that great grandpa founded that’s been in the family for years. It’s a viable enough business, but, you know, for how much longer?” 

Less than a month after President Trump’s inauguration, the broadcast conglomerate laid off its entire national fact-checking team. During a recent company-wide “all hands on deck” call, one Tegna employee reported that executives were “dropping any talk of DEI, saying it is too politicized.”

DEI Doublespeak:

There is minimal reference to diversity on TEGNA’s website. The company claims to “use our diverse voices, talents and backgrounds to serve the greater good of our communities.” And, according to the Wayback Machine’s site captures, there hasn’t been much change since Trump issued his anti-DEI executive order, though employees report being told that the company was “dropping” discussions of the issue.

What It Owns:

TEGNA (Tribune’s former broadcast division) owns two radio stations in one market (WBNS-AM and WBNS-FM), and 61 TV stations in 51 markets (it operates an additional station, WUPW, under a shared-services agreement). It also owns the television channels News Watch 15, Quest and True Crime Network, along with the Locked On podcast network.