Standard Media Group is an American broadcast and digital media company based in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...

. Standard Media was founded by Deborah A. McDermott, who serves as the company's

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

. Previously, McDermott was the

chief operating officer A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the " C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if t ...

Media General Media General was an American media company based in Richmond, Virginia. The company's origins can be traced back to 1887 when Richmond attorney Joseph Bryan acquired ''The Richmond Daily Times'', which later became ''The Richmond Times-Dispatch ...

and CEO-president of Young Broadcasting. Between 2012 and 2017, McDermott and her team led the acquisition of more than 90 television stations and helped grow Young/Media General from a $220 million regional TV group to a nearly $5 billion media company. In 2017, Media General was acquired by Nexstar Broadcasting Group for $4.6 billion. On May 16, 2019, Standard Media announced plans to purchase two ABC-affiliated television stations from

Citadel Communications Citadel Communications Ltd. is an American private broadcasting company. It is based in Bronxville, New York and owns 1 low-power television station on which it operates a regional 24-hour cable news channel. The company was founded in 1982 by ...

for $83 million. The stations, WLNE-TV in Providence,

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but i ...

and

KLKN KLKN (channel 8) is a television station in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by Standard Media, the station maintains studios on 10th Street south of downtown Lincoln and broadcasts from a transmitter located near Uti ...

in Lincoln,

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the so ...

, have been operated by Citadel since 2011 and 1996 respectively. The company announced the acquisition of Waypoint Media and its affiliated companies in November 2019. The Waypoint deal collapsed in January 2021. In November 2020,

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...

announced that they would sell

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelv ...

affiliate KBSI and

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...

affiliate WDKA in

Paducah, Kentucky Paducah ( ) is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky. The largest city in the Jackson Purchase region, it is located at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers, halfway between St. Louis, Miss ...

, to Community News Media (a subsidiary of Standard Media) for $28 million, in a transaction that closed in 2021. On February 22, 2022, a partnership of Standard General and Apollo announced their intent to acquire Tegna; Apollo will hold non-voting shares in the company. As part of the sale, Standard General will sell Standard Media to

Cox Media Group CMG Media Corporation (doing business as Cox Media Group) is an American media conglomerate principally owned by Apollo Global Management in conjunction with Cox Enterprises, which maintains a 29% minority stake in the company. The company pri ...

, which will also acquire Tegna's stations in Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin (including

WFAA WFAA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Dallas, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as an affiliate of American Broadcasting Company, ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Decatur, Texas, Decat ...

KHOU KHOU (channel 11) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Conroe-licensed Quest station KTBU (channel 55). Both stations share studios on Westheimer Road near Up ...

, and

KVUE KVUE (channel 24) is a television station in Austin, Texas, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Steck Avenue just east of Loop 1 in northwest Austin, and its transmitter is locate ...

WFXT WFXT (channel 25) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, affiliated with the Fox network and owned by Cox Media Group. Its studios are located on Fox Drive (near the Boston-Providence Turnpike) in Dedham, and its ...

in Boston will then be divested to Standard General. The sale was approved by Standard General and Apollo Global Management on May 17, 2022.

Stations

References

External links

Official websiteKBSI WebsiteWDKA WebsiteWLNE WebsiteKLKN Website
{{COXMG Television broadcasting companies of the United States Companies based in Nashville, Tennessee Mass media companies established in 2018 Announced mergers and acquisitions