Well, that’s about it for the Summer of 2025. Labor Day always marks the end of summer, and the meteorologists say that it happens on September 1st--regardless of whether the calendar says it has another nineteen days to go before the autumnal equinox. Sure, there could be some warmer temps yet to live through--we saw an awful lot of sweating during the weekend’s college football games, especially on the sidelines and amongst the fans at those open-air stadiums located below the Mason-Dixon line.

(And welcome to the college game, Coach Belichick. That’s a long season ahead there in Chapel Hill.)

What a summer it has been in the local TV business. We thought that things on the station trading front would get moving, as we have documented here over the past few months. But we didn’t see all of that coming. And with the next big meeting of the Federal Communications Commission coming up on September 30th, there is bound to be a lot of heavy lobbying going on in the nation’s capital in the weeks ahead.

We thought it would be helpful to recap the proverbial “shot clocks” that are all counting up on the major station deals announced this summer and where they stand as of the start of September.

Buzzer Already Sounded - Sinclair and Imagicomm sell stations to Rincon.

We’re including this because they are the most significant station transactions the FCC has actually approved so far this year. Rincon, headed by CEO Todd Parkin, who had previously led Sinclair’s regional sports networks venture and was CEO of PBC Broadcasting before that, first acquired a total of five stations in four midwestern markets from Parkin’s former employer (Sinclair) for a bit over $24 million. (One station in Milwaukee, (WVTV, a CW affiliate), one in Kirksville-Ottumwa, Iowa (KTVO, a ABC and CBS affiliate), one in Hannibal, Missouri-Quincy, Illinois-Keokuk, Iowa (KHQA, a CBS and ABC affiliate), and two stations in the Springfield-Champaign-Decatur, Illinois market (WICS is the ABC affiliate in Springfield and WICD is a full-time, full-power satellite in Decatur.) That deal was announced way back on March 7th of this year, and it was approved by the FCC on July 1st, over a petition to deny the sale from Frequency Forward. By our count, that was a shot clock that ran for some 116 days.

Rincon got another deal done in even less time with its acquisition of seven former Imagicomm stations for an undisclosed amount. The deal, which gave Rincon stations in Memphis, TN (WHBQ - Fox), Tulsa, OK (KOKI - Fox and KMYT - MyNet), Spokane (KAYU - Fox), Kennewick (KFFX - Fox), Yakima (KCYU - Fox), all in WA, and Yuma, AZ (KYMA - NBC & CBS), was announced back on April 3rd, 2025. It was approved just 17 days after the previous sale from Sinclair was approved, on July 18th. That shot clock ran only 106 days until the FCC signed off—again, over the objections from Frequency Forward.

Both of these deals were completed well within the Commission’s informal “shot clock” duration of 180 days. Thus, providing hope to other groups seeking deals as the summer got rolling and their own “shot clocks” began counting upward.

Shot Clock #1: 57 days and counting - Scripps and Gray’s Station Swapping

On July 7th, the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Company and the Atlanta-based Gray Media announced they were trading stations in five markets, with Gray acquiring WSYM (Fox) in Lansing, Michigan, and KATC (ABC) in Lafayette, Louisiana, from Scripps. For those stations, Scripps will get KKTV (CBS) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and KMVT (CBS) and KSAW-LD (Fox) in Twin Falls, Idaho. This deal was an exchange of equal-value assets, the companies said, while giving both market duopolies in each market they acquired stations in. This was the starting salvo, so to speak, for the novel idea that the necessary regulatory approvals will require—as the Scripps press release put it—"certain waivers of outdated local ownership restrictions that have uniquely restricted local broadcasters’ ability to compete in today’s dynamic and highly competitive media environment.” In other words, the expectation that Chairman Brendan Carr will deliver on his stated promise to get rid of those pesky FCC rules that would typically prevent duopolies from happening in Lansing and Lafayette for Gray and Colorado Springs and Twin Falls for Scripps.

Both Scripps and Gray indicated at the announcement of this deal that they anticipated simultaneous closings on these station swaps in “the fourth quarter of this year.” That would start on October 1st, so if the FCC were to change the rules in its September 30th meeting, that would make that timeline feasible.

Shot Clock #2: 25 days and counting - Allen Media sells 10 stations to Gray Media

Byron Allen’s Allen Media hired station broker Moelis & Company at the beginning of June to find a buyer (or buyers) for the company’s portfolio of 28 local stations. On August 8th, it found its first buyer when Gray Media announced it had reached a deal for 10 of Allen’s stations for the bargain price of $171 million. The agreement includes stations in Huntsville, AL (WAAY - ABC), Paducah, KY-Harrisburg, IL (WSIL - ABC), Evansville, IN (WEVV - CBS & Fox), Fort Wayne, IN (WFFT - Fox), Montgomery, AL (WCOV - Fox), Lafayette, LA (KADN - Fox), Columbus-Tupelo, MS (WTVA - NBC & ABC), Rockford, IL (WREX - NBC), Terre Haute, IN (WTHI - CBS), and West Lafayette, IN (WLFI - CBS). 

Again, Gray is buying stations that would give it duopolies in six markets where it already owns stations, such as in Huntsville (WAFF - NBC and WTHV-LD - Telemundo), Evansville (WFIE - NBC), Fort Wayne (WPTA - NBC and WISE - CW), Montgomery (WSFA - NBC), and Rockford (WIFR - CBS & WSLN - CW). So once again, the deal with Allen Media is in anticipation of those pesky existing ownership rules being rewritten by the FCC any old time now.

Shot Clock #3: All of 14 Days (so really just underway) - Nexstar to merge with TEGNA

With all this dealing underway, there was no way that Nexstar’s Perry Sook wasn’t going to be at the table. And you could have almost heard World Poker Tour host Vince Van Patten’s trademark exclamation “He’s going all in” two weeks ago, on August 19th, when Sook pushed about $6.2 billion into “the pot” to merge with TEGNA. The play potentially creates a behemoth among local television owners, with a combined 265 stations once TEGNA’s current 64 stations are added to Nexstar’s existing portfolio of 201 stations.

Yes, this deal also creates a number of duopolies. We previously detailed 31 of them in this coverage back on August 11th.

And unlike the previous deals, the union of Nexstar and TEGNA (expected to close by “the second half of 2026”) will create those duopolies in some major markets, where the arguments that may hold water in smaller markets--claiming that the duopolies are necessary “due to economic conditions.” (Meaning that struggling stations in those markets could go out of business if not allowed to merge.) But those claims may be a little too hard to swallow for even a deregulation-minded FCC—and perhaps even the US Congress, if the CEO of the Newsmax channel has anything to say about it. 

Can somebody get Chairman Carr a glass of water?

Still Waiting to Tip-Off: Cox Media Group and…somebody?

We detailed in this column just last week why we thought the small, but mighty group of Cox TV stations that the money guys at Apollo Global Management invested in back in 2019 would be among the very first to be sold this summer. And why they weren’t—so far at least. That doesn’t mean that a deal couldn’t get done any day now, assuming that somebody has a spare $4 billion or so lying around or that they could get their hands on reasonably quickly—and at reasonable lending terms.

That list of buyers that we can think of is relatively small. (Doesn’t mean there aren’t some we haven’t even imagined yet, but keep reading because we have imagined a bunch.)

And later match-ups: Maybe on the West Coast? (Or the East Coast?)

There are still stations with virtual “For Sale” signs up all over the country. Allen Media still has 18 stations that Moelis is presumably out there shopping around. We keep hearing stage whispers that Sinclair still wants to be in the game, even after floating the idea that it would do a deal for TEGNA before Nexstar’s bold bet led them to fold on that play. Will they be a buyer--or will they find more places to sell off their smaller markets, freeing up some cash for a new "buy-in”?

(We should apologize here for stretching out the Poker metaphor almost as long as the Basketball one.)

What about the privately owned family-operated stations, such as those in single markets like The Goodmon family's in Raleigh or The Manship family's in Baton Rouge? Or the family-owned groups such as Hubbard, Sunbeam, Morgan Murphy, and News-Press Gazette? If someone showed up with enough money, would the younger generations of these families be interested in selling and exiting the television broadcasting business while their assets still have significant value? (Here’s a phrase to remember: “Never say never.”)

And no pondering of who might be sellers or buyers this fall would be complete without a mention of the Owned and Operated stations of the four big networks. The newly merged Paramount-Skydance says it still values the television business, even though the Paramount movie studio was the major attraction that led to the creation of the new PSKY trading symbol on Wall Street. But when those FCC-granted licenses for your O&O stations are the way for the current administration in Washington to make your business just a little more difficult, how much are they really worth?

Or conversely, perhaps you want to increase the flow of retransmission consent revenue directly into the network’s bottom line? Then maybe expanding your O&O group would make sense? Does anyone not believe that Disney might at least consider the idea of owning the ABC affiliate in the same Central Florida market where it operates its very successful theme parks and cruise line?

For the record, we don’t know if any of these wild ideas has any basis in reality. All we know is that many C-suite executives are waiting and watching to see what will happen next. Along with their employees, of course. The fourth quarter of 2025, along with all four quarters of 2026, still has a lot of time left on the clock.

And nobody in the TV station business wants to get upset by "a buzzer beater."

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