[Update – On Friday, March 27, a U.S. district judge ordered television operator Nexstar Media Group to temporarily keep TEGNA’s assets separate pending a review of the acquisition for potential antitrust violations.]

On March 19, 2026, the FCC approved the $6.2 billion acquisition of TEGNA TV stations by Nexstar Media Inc., including KFMB-TV 8 San Diego. The CBS network affiliate will join independent KUSI and Fox network affiliate KSWB (“Fox 5”) under common ownership in the San Diego market. The deal makes Nexstar the owner of 259 television stations in the U.S. and includes a waiver of the FCC’s national ownership rule, which prohibits a single corporation from owning more than 39% of the country’s stations. Cable and satellite distribution groups have filed legal challenges, citing Nexstar’s future leverage in retransmission fee negotiations. Some states and Newsmax have also filed legal challenges.

FCC rules currently disallow a single entity from owning more than two full-power TV stations in a given Designated Market Area (DMA), but the FCC waived this rule for San Diego, citing a possible loss of local news should KUSI be divested.

There is some speculation and rumors that the local operating group of stations will close the Engineer Road plant, where KFMB has operated since 1976. No word yet on what will happen with the current engineering staff.

Remember when San Diego was once served by two cable companies? Southwestern Cable had the territory north of Interstate 8, and Cox Cable had the territory south of that highway. Well, now it’ll be one company.

On February 27, the FCC approved Charter Communications’ $34.5-billion purchase of Cox Communications. The combined corporation will be called Cox Communications, but the fiber and cable TV delivery service will continue to be called “Spectrum.” It’s set to become the largest internet service provider, with 38 million customers.

The two companies’ business services have been competitive over most of San Diego County for some time.

The future impact on San Diego employees is unknown.

The IPAWS RWT for the week of January 11—17 did not send correctly, so this was a true test of your EAS device.

From the FEMA:

“We discovered after the IPAWS RWT chron job launched the Monday morning IPAWS RWTs that the associated IPAWS digital certificate in use had expired. As individual EAS devices are required by FCC Rules to check CAP message digital signatures, the EAS device should have flagged the incoming RWT as expired. Let’s consider this week to be a test of EAS device security. We have replaced the expired digital certificate. Next week’s messages will be properly signed with a valid digital certificate.”

For that week, you should have received an error about the lack of certificate, or received no RWT from IPAWS at all. If you received a valid RWT, you have a validation issue. Log the exception and pat yourself on the back.