In his first public comments since a federal judge blocked Nexstar’s merger with Tegna, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook took aim at DirecTV, one of the plaintiffs maneuvering against the $6.2 billion deal.
“The idea that anyone, Nexstar included, would be a ‘broadcast behemoth’ – to me, that term is kind of an oxymoron, given who we compete against,” Sook told Inside Edition host Debra Norville in a 1-on-1 conversation Tuesday at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Amazon, Google and Meta, he added, “are multi-trillion-dollar companies. Even DirecTV, which is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, is twice the size of us. So [saying] we’re the ‘behemoth throwing our weight around in this marketplace’ doesn’t really reflect the reality.”
DirecTV, he added, has “a history of trying to weaken the companies it’s trying to negotiate with.” He said in retransmission disputes resulting in blackouts in recent years,
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