With news today that the Tribune Company has agreed to acquire 19 television stations from Local TV Holdings LLC, making it one of the largest TV station owners in the nation, we are seeing a dramatic escalation of media consolidation. The news comes just weeks after Gannett's $1.5 billion takeover of Belo’s TV stations and a series of major acquisitions from Sinclair Broadcasting.

In the Seattle Times this Sunday, our CEO and President Craig Aaron highlighted how the Gannett/Belo deal will impact the Pacific Northwest. “In Seattle, Gannett would take over NBC affiliate KING 5, and its corporate footprint would cover the Northwest with stations in Spokane, Boise and Portland, plus the daily newspaper in Oregon’s capital city, Salem,” wrote Aaron. “The company would control the top two network affiliates in St. Louis; the daily newspaper and ABC station in Louisville; two stations plus a piece of the daily paper in Tucson; and three TV stations plus the daily Arizona Republic in Phoenix.”

At this point, no community is untouched by media consolidation, and in many cities not one major TV station is owned locally. Localism, or the idea that our nation needs local news and information that serves and responds to local communities, has been a central part of our communications policy for decades. But the in reality local TV is losing ground because of all these deals, and that’s leaving more and more people with less and less meaningful coverage of their area.

“This deal adds to a blizzard of broadcast industry consolidation that is poised to leave America’s media system less local, less diverse and less accountable to the people in these communities,” said Craig Aaron in a statement on the deal. “By the time all these deals are done, a handful of companies could control almost all of the network affiliates in major markets and swing states.”

Tribune is buying the stations, located in 16 markets, for more than $2.7 billion in cash. If the deal is approved, Tribune will control of 42 stations across the country including nine places where they will own two or more stations. This is unprecedented centralization of media power.

To get a sense for what this new era of consolidation means locally, look at Denver and St. Louis. The deal would cement Tribune’s control of multiple stations in Denver and St. Louis, officially consolidating operations at stations where Local TV has already been running “covert consolidation” deals – where more than stations’ newscast originates from a single newsroom.

Here’s the thing:  Gannett also operates a duopoly in Denver and is pursuing one St. Louis.  More stations controlled by fewer owners in these major markets means homogenized news and opinion.

Aaron described it this way: “Local broadcasts are becoming simulcasts, with the same cookie-cutter content piped in from distant corporate headquarters, once-competitive stations combined into single newsrooms and fewer journalists forced to fill more hours of airtime.”

In addition, this deal will put Tribune in control of Local TV’s stations in the Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, Va. area, where Tribune owns the Daily Press newspaper — a combination that would violate FCC ownership limits. So far we’ve stopped the FCC from changing those rules.

The Gannett/Belo and Tribune/Local TV mergers will be some of the first tests of the FCC’s new chairman, Tom Wheeler, and his willingness to stand up against the broadcast bullies.

“The FCC needs to wake up to what’s happening on local TV,” said Aaron. “Wall Street may be overjoyed at this merger mania, but the rest of us should be very worried about having fewer viewpoints on the air and fewer reporters on the beat.“