The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have signaled they have no antitrust issues with the Scripps and Journal Communications deal to merge their broadcast station groups and spin off their newspaper holdings into a separate company.
That came in an early termination notice released by the FTC Wednesday (Sept. 3). That means their Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust review has ended early with no government plans to condition or try and block the deal in court.
The FCC usually coordinates its own deal reviews—which extend beyond antitrust into public interest concerns—with DOJ and the FTC, so the FCC's OK of the deal should be coming soon as well.
The companies announced in late July that they wanted to create a new broadcast company, E.W. Scripps, remaining in Cincinnati, and newspaper company Journal Media Group, based in Milwaukee.
