NewsNation Growing With ‘Baby Steps,’ Compton Says

Nexstar’s NewsNation may still be struggling to find an audience after its 2020 launch, but its chief executive says the network is profitable and right on track with its slow-growth strategy.

Sean Compton, president of the company’s networks division, says NewsNation’s initial staff of 150 “has doubled and will double again,” and that the network is still moving, hour by hour, along a trajectory that will eventually take it into 24/7 programming. Collaboration with Nexstar’s owned stations has become more bidirectional, he notes, and he’s pleased with how talk shows from both Ashleigh Banfield and Dan Abrams have developed despite both struggling to connect with viewers.

In an interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp, Compton speaks to NewsNation’s new marketing push underway, its coverage of the war in Ukraine, where Nexstar’s acquisition of The Hill is figuring into TV plans and whether Bill Shine, the controversial former Fox executive whose work for the network polarized staffers, still has a role there.

An edited transcript.

Where do you foresee reaching the 24/7 original programming mark with NewsNation, if that’s still a goal?  

We definitely plan on getting there. We are building the network, sometimes an hour at a time, sometimes multiple hours at a time. We started in 2020 with 21 hours live. We started this year with 49 hours live in January, and here we are at the end of first quarter with 56 live hours per week.

There is not an exact date on it because each day we find something that occurs like a war, and we added that 11 o’clock hour and we are now not turning back from that. You pivot when things like that happen and you see opportunities. We will get to 24 hours. We will make that ultimate leap here in the near future, I would say.

You debuted a live late evening newscast just as war in Ukraine was breaking out. How many journalists have you sent there? What kind of resources and field crews?

For a network that is only 18 months old, I am incredibly proud of the Ukraine coverage. We have Robert Sherman, who raised his hand immediately. He was doing our border report [in] Texas and said, I want to go to Ukraine. We wanted to make sure that we have the proper security and coverage there. So, he went over there. We just moved him out. He is on the Poland side now, but he has been there for four and a half weeks.

We have a number of AP and freelancers who are participating in our coverage. It is one of those things where you say to yourself, how can we compete with the CNNs and Foxes in this, and we have done quite well.

We have a couple of gifts that we have discovered along the way. Leland Vittert joined us from Fox. He spent lots of time in the Middle East and in Europe and Ukraine, specifically, and Leland is our map guy. In addition to being a host and a reporter for the network, we discovered he knows those maps better than anyone, so every night Leland is explaining where Russia has moved into and what impact has it had.

For CNN, coverage of the first Gulf War was a watershed moment for the network in building its brand and getting national recognition. Can NewsNation’s coverage of Ukraine have that same potential impact? Is it an opportunity to distinguish your news product?

From a credibility standpoint, absolutely. CNN was the only game in town at that time and it went wall to wall coverage and did a phenomenal job. For us, the world is a different place. We wanted to stay true to that center mission of good, honest reporting and credibility and talk hosts who are willing to argue and hear arguments from both sides, whatever the topic is.

We started off building up the news credibility, and this reporting will put us into a place that people are taking notice. They are seeing it done without any political skew. We are reporting facts and interviewing people who are there on the ground and in the bomb shelters. We have had a number of people zooming nightly with us. Ashleigh Banfield has taken the position of what are we doing about the orphans. Each talk host and reporter has put their arms around it. Watch the coverage. You decide for yourself.

How big is your overall news staff right now from when you launched when it was around 150? How many reporters are there, not counting those who are contributing from the local Nexstar stations?

The staff size has doubled. As far as reporters, it has tripled since we launched, but the staff size has doubled, and it will double again. It is in that 300 range now, to answer the question, but it just keeps growing because we have a lot of open positions now that we are trying to fill. Obviously, every time that you expand an hour there are more needs that we have in the newsroom.

What does the working relationship between NewsNation and the Nexstar stations across the country look like on a practical, daily basis? How do you work with local news directors to identify where local reporters will be doing double duty to file stories for both their stations and NewsNation?

[Recently,] a number of tornados ripped through Texas, and we were able to use the Nexstar stations in Austin and some of the other Texas markets to provide us footage in real time. With the [recent] shooting in Arkansas, [there] was a Nexstar station reporter there.

Those stations are a huge part of the puzzle in giving NewsNation a long-term advantage. [Recently] on the NewsNation side, our business reporter did a story on shrinkflation that we sent out to the stations. We did that story, which was of great interest, and we made that available to all of our stations. We have a working relationship that they can take anything from us, and we can take from them.

KTLA [Los Angeles] had a reporter in Ukraine, so in addition to our NewsNation reporter and our freelancers and the AP, we used her as well. That working relationship with the stations is very important and vital to the success of our station.

So, it is bidirectional.

It is. It was more one directional for a while, but our goal is to make it bidirectional and that is slowly happening because as we build up the NewsNation resources, we want the stations to be able to take whatever they can to benefit themselves from what we can offer.

For local reporters, are they versioning their NewsNation stories when they are picked up or do you just lift them whole cloth from the stations?

They are doing custom versions for us, at least custom tags. The other opportunity there is the live hits.

Nexstar uses a lot of MMJs at its stations. Is that also true of NewsNation?

All of our reporters in the field have a producer and a photog with them, but it depends on the moment. If there is a breaking news moment and we need an MMJ, we can do that.

In terms of the non-news programming, you have Ashleigh Banfield and Dan Abrams, whose time slot just moved. What else do you have in the plans in terms of non-news programming going forward? Are you happy to just sit with Banfield and Abrams, or are more host-focused programs in the cards down the road?

There is certainly a balance between the news programming and the host/talk programming. We absolutely will continue to expand both in news and with the talk programming. We are talking to a number of people right now. We constantly are. A lot of folks have reached out to us. As far as non-core news programming like specials and documentaries, we have talked about it, but we are not there yet.

Are you happy with the Abrams and the Banfield shows as they are right now, or do you want to see them continue to improve?

Very happy. We are going to market them significantly in the coming weeks. In fact, the billboards went up this week across the country and we have a lot of other marketing going out. We are very proud of the shows, so now we want people to come find them.

What about the panel show format? That is an area where you can easily move out of the center and polarize.

[During] rush hour we will do a second hour and we have formatted a Hill segment in collaboration with our partners at The Hill. Then we have a panel segment that we are going to try. The nice thing is it is a segment, so you can walk, not run, and then if it works you can quickly run with it. We have facilities built out for that. We would love to be able to do more of that.

Speaking of The Hill, how is that collaboration playing out? Where is it folding into the TV operation?

The Hill has been great. They have a lot of great contributors. We have the D.C. bureau that NewsNation uses, and so The Hill contributors can be there easily. It brings a number of credible points to our coverage in Washington.

Do you foresee Hill-branded programming forthcoming?

Absolutely.

Is there a daily editorial collaboration that goes on between your NewsNation newsroom and the Hill’s newsroom?

They are in communication quite a bit. They are a separate news operation, but they have a great working relationship with our producers that will continue to grow.

Bill Shine’s role at the network was very divisive among staffers when it was revealed that he was there. Is he involved with NewsNation any longer?

Yes, he is a consultant. We have a number of consultants. Bill Shine was a consultant for the highest-rated cable news outlet on television. We want his expertise. He was also there when it launched. We wanted to have that expertise, someone who was in the room when it happened.

The issue with him is that he was with a network known for right-leaning programming.

Well, we have a lot of staffers from CNN and MSNBC, too. MSNBC is clearly a left-leaning network, and many would argue CNN is as well. We have a number of producers and employees from those organizations.

In his role as a consultant now, is that formulating new programming or tweaking existing programming? Can you elaborate on his role?

Like I say, we have a lot of consultants. He is in our ear with a lot of different ideas in terms of growth, expectations, timing. I am not going to go into what all of our consultants do in great detail, but he is involved with us just like all the others that are involved.

Joe Donlan, one of the more central faces of the network, recently left. What does that signal about a potential new direction?

I think it was a personal decision. The network really needed Joe to launch and [he] is a great reporter, a great anchor. As far as the network goes, we are going to do the second hour of Rush Hour, a very popular show for us. We want to expand that show and add some elements — investigative reporting, the panel segment, as well as a Hill segment.

Are you still looking for that big, assertive personality to kick off the network?

It is hard to just go out and look for that person. A lot of times that person is discovered, like Leland Vittert. He was doing an hour at night and now he is doing two hours and he is contributing to our morning show and whenever we have to show a map and talk about the war. There are certain strengths that you find along the way that you want to utilize more of. We have a few of those people contributing to the network on a daily basis.

As you continue to try to build the brand, what are you finding to be the most effective marketing channels beyond the Nexstar stations? How are people finding you?

At the end of the day, it is going to be a couple of things. We are doing a lot of outdoor, a little bit of radio, a lot of television because we obviously believe in television. Our marketing campaign has officially kicked off this year. We didn’t do any in the first quarter because of a lot of noise between sports and the Olympics. We want to boost the awareness, but a lot of folks are going to watch our product and they are going to tell other folks.

What about apps and other digital iterations of NewsNation? What is available right now and what is in the roadmap?

We have NewsNationNow.com, the website. We have the app. If you authenticate through your provider, you can watch our stream. We have a 24-hour digital newsroom. Thanks to the Nexstar stations, we have a lot of great regional news stories as well in there, too.

What about NewsNation’s streaming plans? Is it represented in any vMPVDs, or do you have plans to launch a streaming channel?

Dana Zimmer, our head of distribution, has done an amazing job of getting us on YouTube TV, Roku, Hulu. That is all positive growth for us, distribution-wise.

Is a standalone streaming channel in the cards?

Everything is in the cards, but right now we are just trying to get eyeballs through our linear channel and our digital efforts. That is what the cable operators expect from us and so that is what we are giving them.

Last spring when I asked [Nexstar CEO, President and Chairman] Perry Sook how much runway he was willing to give NewsNation to find an audience despite having a rough start, he said that runway would be as long as he is sitting at the top of the company. Is that still the case?

It is doing exactly as it was intended to do. You make business decisions based on strengths and weaknesses. Our strength is in local news reporting, having bureaus all over the country. We don’t own a studio. We are not going to get sports rights, so what do we do with this great channel and this amazing distribution platform? It made sense to go where we have our greatest strength, and that is with news.

Clearly, we modeled this knowing that it was going to take a while. Fox was not No. 1 overnight. CNN took many years. It wasn’t until baby Jessica fell down the well that many people even discovered CNN, and that was five or six years in. We are at a great place, and we have plenty of runway because we are the only cable news channel to launch with a profit. Perry has said that we are profitable. So, it is going exactly as we designed it to go. Baby steps.