Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway is backing E.W. Scripps' planned acquisition of true-crime cable network ION Media. The Ohio-based broadcasting company, which owns Katz Broadcasting and Triton Digital, is planning to buy ION Media through a deal estimated to be worth around $2.65 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway announced that it intends to buy around $600 million worth of Scripps' preferred shares in order to help it finance the deal. Under its agreement with Scripps, Berkshire will also be given the option to buy an additional 23.1 million preferred shares priced at $13 per share. If Berkshire chooses to take the option, it would translate to about $300 million in additional investments.

Following the announcement, Scripps' share prices surged by more than 20%. Scripps, which recently relaunched a revamped version of its popular cable TV channel Court TV last year, stated that it plans to combine ION Media with its Katz Broadcasting cable networks. Apart from Court TV, other popular channels under the company's subsidiary include Bounce and Grit.

Over the past years, Buffett had been mostly leaving some investment decisions up to his lieutenants, namely Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. In the latest investment, Scripps mentioned Thursday that Weschler was actually the one responsible for Berkshire's involvement in the deal.

"As the media industry continues its rapid evolution, Berkshire Hathaway is fortunate to partner with this management team and the Scripps family, who have successfully anticipated the future of media for over a century," Weschler had noted in a statement following Scripps announcement.

The decision to buy a stake in Scripps is Berkshire Hathaway's latest move to invest its nearly $150 billion in cash. Buffett previously stated that he was actively looking for than one "elephant-sized" bet on a worthwhile company. However, the oracle of Omaha has so far been unwilling to take any big risks as stocks have mostly still remained at elevated levels.

Over the past few months, Berkshire Hathaway has made a number of notable albeit smaller investments to take advantage of the disruptions in stock prices caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. Last month, the company announced that it had purchased several stakes in a number of Japanese trading conglomerates. Earlier in the year, the company also acquired some assets from Dominion Energy estimated to be worth around $10 billion.