Look Where Tegna is Spending Millions of Dollars While Furloughing Employees (Patreon)

The Furloughs have started at Tegna and will continue for the next couple of months. 

But, you maybe be interested in knowing that Tegna has spent millions of dollars trying to fight off investing group Standard General. 

Standard General are active investors in broadcasting/media and are currently the largest investor in Tegna. The company, headed by Soo Kim owns almost 12% of Tegna and is currently trying to get some seats on Tegna’s board of directors. 

Tegna has spent nearly $15 million dollars trying to fight off Standard General and despite Kim owning the largest share of the company, Tegna does not want him or his people on their board. 

Standard General wants to have 4 seats on the 12 person board and Tegna’s executives are doing all they can to stop that from happening. Tegna has gone so far as to buy ads on FTVLive and other websites to beg shareholders to vote to keep the current board members. 

Many of Tegna’s current board members lack broadcasting experience and know next to nothing when it comes to TV news. 

Standard General wants to bring board members that understand how broadcasting and TV news work. In other words, Standard General thinks you should have Journalists cover the news and not comedians. What a concept!

Tegna CEO Dave Lougee is begging shareholders to use their proxy vote to keep his board intact. As Tegna's largest shareholder, Standard General thinks that it deserves a few seats at the table. 

FTVLive couldn't care less what is happening in the boardroom, but we do care as to what is happening in the newsroom?

Tegna is asking their news people to cover the COVID pandemic and inform the viewers. They are rewarding those people by furloughing them and cutting their pay. This is all happening while they are spending millions to try and starve off Standard General in a proxy fight. 

Tegna has told their employees that the furloughs are being used to hopefully stop layoffs. They are not telling their employees that they have spent north of $10 million bucks, so their cushy board members can keep their seats and so they can continue to hire comics to do the news. 

Also, it should be pointed out that Standard General has launched a website called Tomorrow's Tegna.  

Let's hope that Tomorrow's Tegna hires seasoned Journalists and not kids and comics like today's Tegna is doing.