8:36 p.m. | Updated
The Tribune Company, known for its newspapers but moving steadily toward television, accelerated its transformation into a broadcasting company on Monday when it agreed to pay $2.7 billion for 19 local stations from Scranton to Salt Lake City.
The deal nearly doubles the company's television footprint across the country, giving it one of the largest groups of local affiliates in the United States.
It also continues the groundswell of consolidation in local television, as big media companies stockpile stations to reap the lucrative retransmission fees the stations receive, and take advantage of a revived advertising market.
Just last month, the Gannett Company agreed to buy the Belo Corporation, adding 20 stations to the 23 it already owned, and further reducing its dependence on newspapers like USA Today.
“It is a time to gobble or get gobbled,†said Steve Ridge, who is a consultant for local stations for Frank N. Magid Associates.
For Tribune, the time had come to move beyond print. Since it emerged from bankruptcy six months ago, the company has been seeking to sell some or all of its newspapers, which include The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times. At the same time, it signaled its intention to build its broadcast holdings by installing a seasoned television executive, Peter Liguori, as head of the business.
Many observers thought the newspaper sale would be well under way by now, but the bidding has yet to begin. The process has proved more problematic than originally envisioned. “We are looking at all of our strategic options†for the newspapers, Mr. Liguori told investors on Monday, revealing nothing new about the situation.
Tribune, which already owned 23 local stations, bought the 19 stations Monday from Local TV Holdings, a company owned by the investment firm Oak Hill Capital Partners. Tribune will finance the deal with cash on hand - it had $554.4 million in cash and equivalents as of March 31 - and up to $4.1 billion in loans from banks including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.< /p>
Even though the television business faces tremendous pressure from new Internet business models, local stations are highly attractive because they take in substantial revenue in the form of fees from the cable and satellite companies that carry the stations. Those retransmission fees are growing rapidly. They are expected to total $3 billion industrywide this year and grow to $5 billion by 2016.
The more stations a company owns, the more influence it has when it enters negotiations with distribution and programming partners.
Adding stations also gives companies like Tribune more exposure to political battleground states, where candidates spend enormous amounts of money on advertising every two years.
In addition to Gannett and its acquisition of Belo, another of the biggest station owners in the country, Sinclair, has spent about $2 billion acquiring a series of smaller station owners in the last year and a half. It has said it is looking for more suc h opportunities.
But Tribune's deal eclipses all the others, and the financing it has received from banks underscores the belief that stations are viewed as a safe bet.
“The new management, postbankruptcy, clearly signaled that they were focusing on the broadcast side of the business,†said Alan D. Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur. “It suggests they want Tribune to unmistakably be a broadcasting company.â€
But he warned that these profits might not last long. “Local broadcasting is going to be the next big legacy media that undergoes what we like to call a painful paradigm shift,†Mr. Mutter said. “I actually question why everybody would be rushing into the local TV business.â€
He said local stations were currently “a highly profitable business†but added “what happened to newspapers is about to happen to TV.â€
As one piece of evidence for this, Allbritton, which owns eight local stations, is looking to sell them so it can concentrate on the Web site Politico and other digital media businesses.
Still, Mr. Ridge of Magid predicted that more station groups would buy or sell by the end of the year, and said that 2013 would “go down as the year of transformational consolidation, forever changing the landscape of local market television ownership and operation.â€
The effects may eventually be visible to viewers in cities large and small across the country. In St. Louis, for instance, Gannett owns the NBC affiliate while Belo owns the CBS affiliate. Once that acquisition closes, Gannett will sidestep regulatory requirements by having an outside company maintain ownership of the CBS affiliate, KMOV, while the two stations share resources.
Already, the Fox affiliate in St. Louis, owned by Local TV, and the CW affiliate, owned by Tribune, share reporters and studios. The acquisition Monday will formalize that relationship.
Critics of these sharing arrangements, like the public interest group Free Press, say they are bad for television consumers.
“The F.C.C. needs to wake up to what's happening on local TV - which is still the No. 1 source for news in America,†the group's president, Craig Aaron, said Monday. “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.†Tribune, for its part, reiterated its commitment to community news.
Speaking to investors, Mr. Liguori said the deal would give Tribune greater reach for its programming and its digital ventures. He also talked up the potential benefits for the company's somewhat obscure and low-rated cable channel WGN America, which is available in about 75 million homes across the country. Tribune hopes that the increased leverage that comes from having more stations will help it earn higher subscriber fees for WGN as well.
Seven of Local TV's 19 stations are affiliates of the Fox network; added to the seven Tribune already owned, it makes the company the biggest holder of Fox affiliates. Tribune will remain the biggest holder of affiliates of the CW network.
Mr. Liguori said the acquisition on Monday would have no bearing on the future of newspapers like The Los Angeles Times, but analysts said it looked more likely that Tribune would try to unload them.
It remains unclear whether the company will sell the papers as a group or individually. Those who have expressed interest in The Los Angeles Times include Eli Broad; David H. and Charles G. Koch; Rupert Murdoch; and Aaron Kushner, the publisher of The Orange County Register. In the past, Warren E. Buffett has said he wants to buy one of Tribune's smaller newspapers, The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa.
Michael de la Merced and David Carr contributed reporting.
A version of thi s article appeared in print on 07/02/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Tribune in $2.7 Billion Deal for 19 Local TV Stations .
A version of this article appeared in print on July 3, 2013, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: F.C.C. Is Told Verizon Underpaid Data Refunds .
Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency 
