Nexstar Media Group

Mediacom Communications said Tuesday evening it reached a retransmission consent deal with Nexstar Media Group, avoiding a blackout of the latter’s TV stations, since the old deal was scheduled to expire at midnight. Mediacom’s agreement comes hours after Nexstar reached similar retransmission consent deals with Comcast and Frontier Communications.

The owner of Fox affiliates KLJB  Davenport, Iowa; KPEJ Odessa, Texas; and KMSS Shreveport, La., earlier this year sued Nexstar over SSA deals.

The new four-year deal covers 21 NBC affiliated television stations owned by Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting.

Nexstar will purchase Charlotte, N.C.’s Fox and MNT affiliates for approximately $45 million while Fox will buy Nexstar’s Seattle Fox and MNT affiliates and Milwaukee’s Fox affil for approximately $350 million.

Perry Sook (center), CEO of Nexstar Media Group, holds the Station Group of the Year Award for 2019 presented by TVNewsCheck on Wednesday during TVN’s TV2020 conference in New York. Sook is flanked by Kathy Haley, TVN publisher, and Harry Jessell, TVN editor. Nexstar was chosen in recognition of its ascendancy to the top of the broadcasting charts by nearly all measures. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)

The Nexstar Media Group is TVNewsCheck’s Station Group of the Year for 2019. When it closed on its merger with Tribune last month, Nexstar Media Group became the nation’s largest station group by most measures. It operates in 115 markets in 43 states covering 63% of TV households — from Los Angeles (DMA 2) to San Angelo, Texas (DMA 195). But with the FCC blocking its path into new markets, it will have to find new ways to grow.

With little more than a love of broadcasting and burning entrepreneurial ambition, Perry Sook went forth from small-town Pennsylvania radio to build the largest TV station group in the land: Nexstar Media Group, TVNewsCheck’s Station Group of the Year.

The new agreement covers 31 stations owned, operated or for which Nexstar programs or provides services. The Fox affiliates that Nexstar is acquiring from Tribune will also be covered by new agreements immediately upon closing of the deal.

The SVP and regional manager of Nexstar Broadcasting is promoted to the newly created executive sales management position overseeing Nexstar’s sales, business development and revenue initiatives as it prepares to absorb the Tribune Media stations.

“It’s a goldilocks world,” Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said of core, which excludes political advertising. “It’s not too hot, it’s not too cold, it’s kind of plugging along.” And, he added, he sees no reason why the company’s double-digit annual retrans and net retrans growth should not continue for at least the next three years. “We see no change to the outlook or the ecosystem,”

The former NBC Owned Television Stations executive will oversee the company’s television and digital media local content initiatives and advancing the company’s multi-platform approach for its local news programming and content.

Matthew Rosenfeld and Traci Wilkinson are promoted to newly created regional management positions overseeing Nexstar’s television and digital media operations in select markets.

The question of who will end up owning Cleveland Fox affiliate WJW-TV should be settled soon, but “soon” could mean a couple of days, weeks or months. The key is how fast government regulatory agencies will move on necessary approvals, and that is never easy to predict.

Executives from AT&T and Nexstar Media Group met over the weekend, but the nearly two-week long blackout of about 120 stations continues. The talks continue but there has been no agreement yet, according to an AT&T spokesperson. Negotiations will continue this week, a Nexstar spokesman added.

The broadcaster says AT&T/DirecTV’s actions contrast sharply with its public commentary and cites eight broadcast groups currently without carriage resulting in a loss of service to consumers in 13 U.S. markets.

With the financial pressure on system operators, pitted against need for broadcasters to eventually achieve parity with the most-watched cable networks, retrans fights and blackouts are bound to sometimes happen. The sad reality is that in the short term everyone loses. Viewers lose their favorite programs, stations lose news viewers, DirecTV loses subscribers and station general managers lose their minds.

Both Graham and Nexstar have openings in their respective corporate headquarters in Chicago and Dallas for a chief technology officer and a senior vice president of local content development.

Many DirecTV and AT&T U-verse subs awoke Thursday to find that Nexstar stations were no longer available. The broadcaster claims the stations were “abruptly removed” by the distributor, while AT&T said it had hoped to prevent a blackout and “even offered Nexstar more money to keep their stations available.”

For the second straight year, shareholders have rejected a multimillion-dollar pay package for the CEO of the largest owner of television stations in the nation. At issue was $41.4 million in future stock awards to Nexstar Media Group CEO Perry A. Sook under a four-year contract extension he signed in January.

Ron Romines, the general manager of its properties in Albany, N.Y., is tapped to fill a newly created position overseeing Nexstar’s television and digital media operations in select markets.

Led by Perry Sook, Nexstar has been from its inception in 1996 a voracious consolidator. When it closes on Tribune Media later this year, it will operate 216 stations in 118 markets covering 63% of U.S. TV homes, the most allowed under current FCC rules.

Retrans was the chief contributor to the station group’s top line in the first quarter, accounting for just over half the company’s total $626.6 milllion in revenue. That reflects continued strong retrans growth, up 13.8% in the quarter. Spot and digital, both down the in quarter, account for 40.4% and 8.4% of total revenue, respectively.

The increase to $626.6 million is driven by a 13.8% rise in retransmission consent money to $314 million.

The new syndicated talk show now has been sold in 90% of the U.S. for a Sept. 16 launch.

The agreement with DuJuan McCoy’s new Circle City Broadcasting I marks the completion of Nexstar’s divestiture plan to secure approvals for its Tribune Media purchase. The total gross proceeds from the planned sale of the 21 stations being divested amounts to $1.36 billion.

Dismiss, deny and reject. That was Nexstar and Tribune’s advice to the FCC related to the various parties that petitioned the FCC to block their merger as not in the public interest. They were responding to petitions to deny filed six groups and concerns raised by NCTA—The Internet & Television Association and the American Television Alliance, both of which said that without various conditions the deal should be denied.

A black-owned TV company sued Nexstar Media Group on Wednesday, accusing the company of sabotaging its efforts to operate independently. Marshall Broadcasting Group owns three Fox affiliates in Odessa, Texas; Shreveport, La.; and Davenport, Iowa. The company, owned by Pluria Marshall Jr., bought the stations from Nexstar in 2014, as Nexstar was looking to divest in order to win FCC approval for a series of acquisitions.

With the new broadcast that will launch this fall, Nexstar’s Indianapolis CW affil will provide 75 hours of local news and programming per week.

The spinoffs reflect Nexstar’s regulatory compliance plan to secure approvals for its Tribune Media deal. Tegna is buying 11 stations in eight markets and Scripps gets eight stations in seven markets.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox has decided not to bid for a group of television stations being sold by Nexstar Media Group, according to a person familiar with the situation. The company, which will be spun out of a separate deal with Walt Disney Co. next week, is focusing instead on getting better terms on the deals it has with affiliate stations, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.