New York, March 27, 2014 -- Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") says Media General, Inc. ("Media General") and LIN Media LLC ("LIN") announced an agreement to combine the two companies in a transaction that values LIN at approximately $2.6 billion. As proposed, the transaction has no immediate impact on Media General's credit ratings as operating performance and estimated credit metrics at closing are expected to remain within the B1 rating under Moody's base case scenario. The merger is expected to close in early 2015 and is subject to shareholder approval from Media General and LIN, Hart-Scott-Rodino review, and FCC clearance. Pro forma for the merger, the benefits from greater scale, enhanced geographic and network diversity, as well as the roll out of LIN's digital businesses across the combined platforms partially offset the increase in leverage and issuance of incremental debt. Moody's expects elevated free cash flow supported by heightened political advertising, primarily in the second half of 2014, will be used to reduce debt balances by the end of 2014 thereby reducing the impact of increased debt to be funded in the beginning of 2015.

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