E.W. Scripps to buy ION Media in $2.65 billion Berkshire-backed deal

(Reuters) – TV station owner E.W. Scripps Co will buy peer ION Media in a $2.65 billion deal backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc , the companies said on Thursday.

Shares of E.W. Scripps rose nearly 38% in premarket trading after the Wall Street Journal first reported the deal.

The U.S. broadcast media sector has seen a flurry of mergers in recent years, with operators looking for scale to counter the rise of online streaming and the shift of advertising dollars to the internet.

Berkshire will make a $600 million preferred equity investment in Scripps to finance the deal.

ION Media said it has the fifth-largest average primetime audience among all U.S. cable-carried networks and added it reaches more than 100 million homes through over-the-air and pay TV platforms.

(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)