FCC grants extension to three Ohio papers

The Federal Communications Commission has given a 60-day extension to Cox Media Group, letting the company to go on producing three Ohio papers seven days a week, the Dayton paper reported.

The other papers are the Springfield News-Sun and Journal-News.

Cox Media Group believes it will have a purchaser for the three papers within 60 days.

“This is fantastic news for our employees, our customers and the communities that our newspapers serve,” said Rob Rohr, market vice president of CMG’s Dayton properties. “This would not have been possible without the thousands of hours of hard work by Cox Media Group leadership with the full support of Apollo Global Management’s team. It’s thanks to them that the FCC enabled us to have more time to find a long-term solution for our newspapers.”

In 2019, Cox Enterprises announced that Apollo Global Management was buying most of Cox’s media outlets. Apollo created an entity titled Terrier Media, but the media businesses will still use the Cox Media Group name.

In fall of 2019, the FCC approved the Apollo purchase, but it forced Apollo to cut the daily papers to three print days a week to comply with a court’s ruling on FCC rules that don’t allow one company to own the dominant broadcast media and a daily paper in the same market. The ruling gave Apollo until Jan. 16 to put the three-day schedule in place. In this latest move, the FCC pushed that deadline out to March 16, the Dayton paper reported.

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