Retirement Plans

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2016

Defined Benefit Plan Disclosure [Line Items]

Our principal retirement plan is the TEGNA Retirement Plan (TRP). The TRP is a new pension plan that was formed in connection with the spin-off of our publishing businesses. The TRP assumed certain assets and liabilities from the Gannett Retirement Plan, with the remaining pension obligations being retained by Gannett. The disclosure table below includes the pension expenses of the TRP and the TEGNA Supplemental Executive Retirement Plan (SERP). Our former G.B. Dealey Retirement Plan was merged with the TRP plan on December 31, 2015. The total net pension obligations, both current and non-current liabilities, as of March 31, 2016 were $184.1 million.

Our pension costs, which include costs for qualified and nonqualified plans, are presented in the following table (in thousands):



	Quarters Ended
	Mar. 31, 2016			Mar. 29, 2015

Service cost-benefits earned during the period	$	250		$	233
Interest cost on benefit obligation	6,350			5,652
Expected return on plan assets ^(a)	(6,750		)	(7,497		)
Amortization of prior service cost	150			148
Amortization of actuarial loss	1,700			1,468
Expense for company-sponsored retirement plans	$	1,700		$	4

(a) At the beginning of 2016, we updated our expected annual long-term rate of return on our TRP plan assets to 7.0% from 8.0%. This change resulted in incremental pension costs of approximately $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2016, and will result in approximately $5.5 million of incremental pension costs for the full year 2016.

We do not plan to make contributions to our TRP pension plan in 2016 because none are required under our current assumptions and current funding level. During the quarters ended March 31, 2016 and March 29, 2015, we made $2.4 million and $3.2 million of benefit payments, respectively, to participants of the SERP.