Imagine the hardworking staff’s delight when we received an email from GateHouse Media with the subject line Win a Mortgage-Free or Rent-Free Year!

Excellent!

(We’ll pass over in silence the inconvenient fact that up to $15,000 would be more like an entire three months of mortgage or rent payments in much of Massachusetts.)

Even so, the hardclicking staff went right to Enter Now!, which took us to a page at the (Peoria) Journal Star featuring this message.

Seriously? To enter the sweepstakes we need to set our alarm for 1 AM on November 13?That feels more like a bleepstakes. The folks at Gannett better hope the GateHouse gang is less weaselly when they close their merger deal – if they ever get there.

The New York Post has reported that there might be a hitch in the proceedings that involves the private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

The FCC is concerned that the $1.8 billion loan Apollo is providing to finance the merger could violate its duopoly laws, sources said.

That’s because Apollo also has a deal planned to buy 13 television stations owned by broadcast company Cox Enterprises for $3 billion. And while Gatehouse and Gannett are newspaper publishers and Apollo is buying TV stations from Cox, the FCC has rules that stop common ownership of a daily print newspaper and a TV station in the same market.

GateHouse executives just might want to set their own alarms for 1 AM on November 12.