Allen Media Group has completed a deal to acquire 10 local television stations from Gray Television Inc. for $380 million in cash.

The deal, which transfers ownership of stations previously co-owned by Gray and Quincy Media, Inc. in Midwestern markets where the two companies previously operated side-by-side, was announced in April. It closed Aug. 2. 

While relieving overlaps between Gray and Quincy to comply with regulatory guidelines, the acquisition brings the number of television stations owned by AMG to 25, in 19 markets across the country.

“Gray, when they bought Quincy for $925 million, they had seven overlaps,” Allen said. “So we took care of those divestitures for them, Tucson and Madison and Cedar Rapids and on and on. And in the case of Gray buying Meredith for $2.825 billion, they had one overlap in Rockford, Illinois, and we agreed to buy that as well for $70 million.”

Allen said AMG hopes to use the new stations to populate content on Local Now, the company’s free streaming service with content, and help promote it locally. “Local Now is our streaming platform that's free, advertising video-on-demand and ad supported,” he said. “And we use proprietary software and artificial intelligence to curate aggregate and stream local news, weather, sports and traffic geo-fenced to the users of the zip code.

“We have a portfolio of cable networks. We have a portfolio of big four network affiliates. We have a portfolio of digital platforms direct to the consumer, and we are firm believers in our direct to consumer,” Allen continued. “So everything just works together in symphony to amplify one another and to produce and share content.”

The acquisition marks more than $1 billion in investments in Big Four network affiliates by Allen's company in the last two years, and raises AMG’s national profile to just under 5% of U.S. television households. 

The placement of these stations in states like Arizona, Iowa and Wisconsin gives the company significant opportunities to generate income as top-tier providers of news and information, as well as from advertising in years where the Wall Street Journal recently projected $9 billion in spending on political advertising.

“A number of these states are battleground states where they really tend to spend a lot of money and they're going to want to spend a lot of money just given the fact that you have folks out there who want to deal with [the fact that] we have a 50-50 split in the Senate,” Allen said. “We are extremely well positioned.”