Case Description
Nexstar agreed to acquire Tribune Media Company for approximately $6.4 billion. USDOJ and plaintiff states sued, alleging that the merger would likely substantially lessen competition in thirteen Designated Market Areas (DMAs). MVPDs, such as Comcast, DirecTV, and Charter, typically pay the owner of local broadcast stations in a given DMA a per-subscriber fee for the right to retransmit the station’s content. The per-subscriber fee and other terms under which an MVPD is permitted to distribute a station’s content to its subscribers are contained in a retransmission agreement negotiated between the a broadcast station group, such as Nexstar or Tribune, and a given MVPD, and this agreement typically covers all of the station group’s stations located in the MVPD’s service area, the complaint alleged that both Nexstar and Tribune owned stations in twelve DMAs in which Defendants licensed the television programming of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX (collectively, “Big 4”) affiliate stations to MVPDs for retransmission to their subscribers and the Indianapolis, Indiana DMA in which Defendants sell broadcast television spot advertising. the consent judgment requires divestiture of 13 stations to remedy the potential loss of competition.
