# NewsNation **NewsNation** is the national cable news channel owned by **[[Nexstar]]**, the country's largest local-TV owner. It is marketed as the "unbiased," centrist alternative to Fox News and MSNBC. Its newscast premiered on **September 1, 2020**, and WGN America was renamed NewsNation on **March 1, 2021**. The channel is Nexstar's bid to turn its local-station scale into a national news brand. ## The lineup NewsNation built its schedule by hiring cable-news veterans: Dan Abrams, Leland Vittert and Ashleigh Banfield (2021), and Chris Cuomo (2022) after his firing from CNN. Its contributors include Elizabeth Vargas and the conservative writer Batya Ungar-Sargon. Banfield gave up her primetime slot in December 2025, and on January 19, 2026 the conservative commentator **Katie Pavlich** took over at 10 p.m. (one source). **Election calls.** NewsNation uses [[Decision Desk HQ]] rather than AP, and on November 6, 2024 it was the first to call the presidential race for Trump (one source). ## Nexstar's Washington business NewsNation's corporate owner has needed favors from the Trump administration, and has acted like it: - **Kimmel.** On September 17, 2025, hours after FCC Chairman [[Brendan Carr]] said "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" about Jimmy Kimmel's comments, Nexstar and [[Sinclair Broadcast Group]] pulled *Jimmy Kimmel Live!* from their ABC stations. Nexstar then needed FCC approval for its Tegna deal. They restored the show on September 26 (one source for the full sequence). - **Tegna.** Nexstar agreed to buy [[Tegna]] for $6.2B on August 19, 2025, a deal that puts it in about 80% of TV households. On **March 19, 2026** the FCC's Media Bureau approved it by waiving the 39% national ownership cap, with no vote of the full Commission, and the Justice Department cleared it the same day. Nexstar must sell six stations within two years. - **The states sue.** Thirteen Democratic attorneys general and DirecTV sued in the Eastern District of California. A preliminary injunction on April 17, 2026 requires Nexstar to run Tegna's stations separately until trial, and in August the judge barred Nexstar officials from Tegna's board. Nexstar's appeal is pending. Ratings for 2025–26 were not checked for this page, and the vault's earlier "fastest-growing" claim could not be sourced. ## See Also - [[Nexstar]] · [[Tegna]] · [[Nexstar and Tegna Timeline]] · [[Sinclair Broadcast Group]] - [[Brendan Carr]] · [[FCC]] · [[Jimmy Kimmel]] · [[Decision Desk HQ]] · [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]]