Tegna

Tegna’s stations were blacked out to Dish TV’s 3 million subscribers Wednesday evening after the two companies were unable to reach a new retransmission deal. The blackout affects Dish customers in 53 markets.

The broadcaster is telling the satellite provider’s customers that with an extension to the current carriage agreement set to expire, they could lose access to its stations.

An auction of the Tegna TV station empire has been thrown into doubt as the company has questioned whether a prospective sale to a leading bidder would face antitrust concerns from U.S. regulators.

Hurricane Ida roared into Louisiana on Aug. 16, knocking out power to all of New Orleans. During the storm’s approach, landfall and immediate aftermath, WWL, Tegna’s CBS affiliate there, measured more than 15 million video plays on its YouTube channel alone.

Tegna Inc. said it had received takeover offers after a report that private equity giant Apollo Global Management Inc. and one of the broadcaster’s largest shareholders had made a bid to buy the company.

The New York Post is reporting that Apollo Global Management has teamed with Soo Kim’s Standard General to make an $8 billion binding bid on Tegna Monday. The Apollo-Standard General bid was about $22 a share. Byron Allen was also reportedly considering bidding on Monday.

Can diversifying your sports coverage help you score with new audiences? One TV station group, Tegna, is capitalizing on the excitement generated by college sports by introducing a new podcast that will both expand the company’s digital footprint and promote diversity.

The new app offers on-demand programming from the Quest diginet’s catalog of factual entertainment, science, history and engineering programs, as well as adventure-reality series.

The Tegna NBC affiliate taps Ogas to play a strategic role in supporting and championing diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Not surprisingly, all categories were up over last year, including auto; services; retail; health care; home improvement; entertainment & gambling; insurance, banking & finance; packaged goods; and education,” EVP-CFO Victoria Harker said in the quarterly conference call. “Even categories that continued to face some pressure this quarter — including entertainment, travel & tourism — were up substantially compared to the second quarter of last year.”

The increase to $733 million is driven by record second quarter subscription revenue and advertising and marketing services revenue.

TV station leaders and syndication producers face ever-changing guidance on how and when to bring people back as caution continues to abound and stringent COVID protocols return. Above, on Fox First-Run’s new syndicated show, You Bet Your Life, starring Jay Leno and his former Tonight Show band leader Kevin Eubanks, the live audience of 40-60 people are all vaccinated and masked. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

What’s one thing broadcast journalists can never get enough of? Time. But Stephanie Haney, digital anchor and legal analyst at Tegna-owned Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC, has all the time — and space — she needs.

A Locked On NBA Draft 2021 special, co-produced in partnership with Tegna’s WFAA Dallas on Thursday, July 29, and the Monday, Aug. 2, debut of Locked On HBCU, a podcast fully dedicated to HBCU sports and athletes, are the latest additions to the Tegna podcast.

Tegna Inc.’s board of directors declared a dividend of 9.5 cents per share, payable on Oct. 1 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on Sept. 3. “Our record first quarter results, and the second quarter and full-year 2021 guidance we provided on May 10, 2021, reflect the strength of our business and favorable positioning for continued growth and value creation,” said Dave Lougee, Tegna president-CEO. “As we announced on March 29, this 9.5 cents per share dividend represents a 36% increase to our prior dividend on an annualized basis, and is a reflection of our board’s active review of our capital allocation program and options to create and return value to shareholders.”

Over-the-top advertising has become a surprisingly important business for companies that have been stockpiling television stations. Streaming revenue is letting broadcasters, including Cox Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and the NBC and Fox O&Os, claim a foothold in the technology field and create advanced advertising products for clients enamored of digital and social media.

Grady Tripp, VP and chief diversity officer at Tegna, explains how fostering diversity, inclusion and equity at TV stations can be cultivated by maintaining an inclusive work environment, recognizing and valuing underrepresented groups and securing buy-in from leadership. This is the latest installment of How To, a TVNewsCheck original video series that solicits innovative, practical and actionable advice from TV experts in news, technology, sales and marketing. Earlier episodes: How To Make A Better News Story Working Solo, How To Sell Local OTT Advertising and How To Animate A News Story.

Executives from Tegna, E.W. Scripps, Hearst Television, Gray Television and Bitcentral will explore the possibilities for hubbing some or all TV station group operations — and how much of a role the private or public cloud may play in those future designs — during an Aug. 5 TVNewsCheck webinar. Speakers are (clockwise from upper left): Dave Burke, SVP and CTO, Gray Television; Kurt Rao, SVP-CTO, Tegna; Ray Thurber, VP engineering, E.W. Scripps; Stefan Hadl, VP engineering, Hearst Television; Sam Peterson, GM, core business unit, Bitcentral. Glen Dickson, TVNewsCheck contributing editor, will moderate. Register here.

Earlier this year, Tegna debuted its national VERIFY brand, building on the substantial growth of Verify content on its local media properties. Now, it has chosen Gabe Cohen, Ariane Datil and Brandon Lewis as hosts.

She moves from Tegna’s WHAS Louisville, Ky., to oversee operations at the company’s Seattle NBC affiliate beginning Aug. 2.

Digital leaders from Tegna, ABC Owned Television Stations, Graham Media and Allen Media told a TVNewsCheck webinar audience last week that OTT has opened a wealth of content opportunities to connect with new audiences, while the industry is also getting better at using first-party data to deepen audience ties and boost revenue.

Premion, Tegna’s connected TV advertising company, said it expanded its relationship with IHS Markit to use Polk Automotive Solutions data to target ad campaigns and measure their results. Automotive advertisers using the Premion platform to create regional and local streaming campaigns will be able to incorporate Polk audience segments and data on sales, make and model, price and vehicle type.

The provision of holistic linear and OTT measurements will provide thousands of advertisers with incremental reach and performance information on Tegna’s 64 TV stations and Premion streaming service.

Executives from NBCUniversal Local (Frank Comerford, above), Tegna, Sinclair and Hearst told a TVNewsCheck webinar they’re bedeviled by persistent gaps in the available buying/selling pipeline, which have bogged down the transaction process and added to their expenses. Those woes are leading some broadcasters to bring more of their automated functions in house.

The long-time marketing executive is joining the station group next month from The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

She moves from content director at the company’s WLTX Columbia, S.C., to lead its ABC affil in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pa., following Chuck Morgan’s retirement.

EVP-CFO Victoria Harker said: “We continue to see recovery in non-political advertising in many categories,” including auto services, health care, home improvement, entertainment, gambling, insurance, banking and finance, packaged goods and education.

The increase to $727 million is driven by continued growth in subscription revenue and record first quarter advertising and marketing services (“AMS”) revenues.

Dave Lougee, president and CEO, said: “We are pleased that our shareholders recognize the successful execution of our value-creation strategy, which is delivering record results.”

Tegna announced a big bet at this week’s Interactive Advertising Bureau NewFronts presentation: expanding its Verify fact-checking franchise to reach across the country. With this week’s announcement, Tegna joins other station groups expanding beyond their owned-and-operated markets to launch national brands, like NBC’s LX and ABC’s Localish. Verify, which grew out of an employee off-site brainstorming session six years ago, combines research and transparent sourcing to respond to timely questions in the news with a simple answer: true or false. The segments are produced by a central team as well as individual stations.

The station group moves him from its KSDK St. Louis to oversee content, sales, brand and operations at the Texas CBS affiliate.

Tegna offered a pitch to advertisers at IAB 2021 NewFronts that amounted to: Trust us, because our viewers already do. The station group — among the first-time presenters at IAB’s annual gathering — emphasized how its local roots intertwined with a renewed interest among Americans in their local communities.

Tegna’s NewFronts presentation showcases the power of local media for reaching audiences at scale in a trusted, brand-safe environment.

The station group’s largest active shareholder is demanding Tegna open its books for an investigation into charges of bias and discrimination. The station group, meanwhile, says the allegations against it are “distorted.”

The new channel, available in 43 of the top 50 markets, features home, food and lifestyle programs plus dramatic reality shows.

The first increased quarterly dividend of 9.5 cents per share will be payable on July 1 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on June 4.