Nexstar Media Group announced today that its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.30 per share of its Class A common stock. The dividend is payable on Friday, Dec. 1, to shareholders of record on Friday, Nov. 17.
Frontline Recollections Of Birth Of Retrans
Perry Sook, CEO of Nexstar Broadcasting negotiated one of the earliest retrans deals with an MVPD in 2005 Since Sook took his stand, retrans has grown into a powerful second revenue stream, contributing $40 billion to the top line of the industry. It has kept broadcasting in the TV game. Here, Sook talks about how this vital second revenue stream came to be and its prospects for the immediate future.
Nexstar Names Sean Banks GM West Virginia
The management and sales executive with more than 20 Years of broadcasting experience returns to WOWK in Charleston-Huntington where he was held sales positions from 2005 to 2014.
The executive with more than 30 years of broadcast experience promoted to oversee Nexstar’s Southeast television and digital media operations.
Nexstar Media’s and Sinclair’s ATSC 3.0 spectrum consortium — which has recruited Univision and Northwest Broadcasting as members — is looking for a CEO to run the venture full-time. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook says the companies have hired a firm to find a CEO who can focus full-time on finding new members and orchestrating future revenue opportunities for the soon-to-be-available spectrum.
Nexstar Buys Zombie Station WLWC For $4.1M
OTA Broadcasting had sold the spectrum of the Providence, R.I., CW affiliate in the FCC’s incentive auction.
Exclusives
Former Tribune Media executive Keith Hopkins brings extensive carriage and distribution experience and MVPD relationships to his new role.
Nexstar Media Group announced today that its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.30 per share of its Class A common stock. The dividend is payable on Friday, Aug. 25, to shareholders of record on Friday, Aug. 11.
KRON Expands Weekday Primetime News
The Nexstar San Francisco MNT affiliate is adding newscasts at 8, 9 and 10 p.m. beginning Aug. 21.
WHAG Changes Call Letters To WDVM
The move is designed to reflect the Nexstar station’s expanded geographic coverage with added local news focus in Maryland and Northern Virginia and a new web portal.
Produced by the grouop’s Washington news bureau, Your Voice Arkansas: A Congressional Forum will feature a discussion with Arkansas congressional leaders. The program will cover all 75 counties in the state, airing on KARK, KNWA, KTAL, WATN, KTVE and KOLR in two parts on July 27 and 30.
The two broadcasters will work together to coordinate the transition of the over-the-air delivery to ATSC 3.0 next-gen television services in 97 markets.
The Walls Fargo analyst reaffirms her Outperform rating for the station group’s stock with a target of $85. “We could not be more bullish,” she writes to clients. “In our view, this mgmt. team is doing everything right — in terms of capital allocation, M&A strategy, core operations, you name it.”
The deal covers affiliates in 31 markets. In a separate “OTT master agreement,” Nexstar picks up rights to distribute its Fox affiliates on virtual MVPDs that are already carrying Fox programming.
The veteran Rochester broadcasting executive is promoted from sales director to succeed the retiring vice president-general manager Louis Gattozzi at the Nexstar station.
The fledgling consortium started by Nexstar, Sinclair and Univision, now covers about 90% of the U.S. It plans to work to promote ATSC 3.0 innovation and develop products and services that can drive spectrum utilization, virtual MVPD platforms, multicast channels, automotive applications, single frequency networks and wireless data applications.
The action follows $48.7 million of share repurchases in this year’s second quarter that depleted the balance of a prior $100 million authorization.
The veteran local TV broadcaster moves from Bend, Ore., to oversee WOOD (NBC), WOTV (ABC) and WXSP.
The new contract runs through 2022 and also adds over-the-top digital distribution agreements.
Nexstar Names Tracey Rogers WKRN VP-GM
The Tennessee native and TV news and management veteran returns to Nashville to lead Nexstar’s ABC affiliate there.
Nexstar’s Perry Sook: An Industry Avatar
On Monday, May 22, Perry A. Sook, chairman, president and CEO of Nexstar Media Group Inc., becomes MFM’s latest Avatar Award recipient. He joins the associations’ former Avatar honorees as an exemplar of leadership who demonstrates a commitment to the media community as well as someone who has led his or her company to greater success.
Advertising technology and business strategy executives Anthony Katsur and Michael Kestenbaum named SVP of platforms and SVP of strategy and corporate development, respectively.
Nexstar Details 1Q Minus Media General
According to CFO Tom Carter, 1Q revenue that excludes the contributions from the recently acquired Media General stations broke down to: net revenue up 4.5% with local ad revenue up less than 1%, national ad revenue down less than 7%, retrans revenue up 32% and station website revenue up 12%. CEO Perry Sook said ad revenue now accounts for less than half the mega-group’s net revenue.
Top technologists at Al Jazeera, Sinclair and Nexstar predict the cloud will help producers break news more quickly, while artificial intelligence and Big Data will help them mine their archives for information, not just about news trends, but about how to shape stories for different audiences and distribution channels including mobile, social and OTT.
Nexstar Media Group announced today that its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.30 per share of its Class A common stock. The dividend is payable on Friday, May 26, to shareholders of record on Friday, May 12.
The 2017 NAB Show exhibition opens Monday, April 24, and there will be much to see for broadcast engineers and technologists who find themselves grappling with the repack of the TV spectrum and a nearly completed new broadcast standard. Five top techs — one each from Gray Television, NBCU O&Os, Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tegna Media — talk technology and what they will be looking for at this year’s NAB Show. For a recap of TVNewsCheck’s multi-part roundup of NAB Tech Hot Topics, click here.
KARK Hosts Third Regional Nexstar Training Day
Gregory Raifman, a technology venture capital investor, whose background includes executive positions with Rubicon Project, LiveRail, Mediaplex and Dragon Media Onlie, is tapped to lead the broadcaster’s new digital operations subsidiary.
Nexstar Ups Jim Dodrill To GM Of WBOY
He moves from general sales manager to oversee the NBC-ABC affiliate in Clarksburg-Weston, W.Va.
The broadcast group’s EVP of business and chief revenue officer gets expanded responsibility to “accelerate the company’s transformation into a next-generation multimedia company.”
Nexstar Names Carol Ward Norfolk GM
The broadcasting and sales management executive with more than 25 years of local media experience is promoted to lead its duopoly of WAVY (NBC) WVBT (Fox).
The veteran Nexstar Executive is appointed to a newly created position overseeing all company-wide local content initiatives and its expanded Washington news bureau. In addition, Chris Berg is promoted to senior director of local content development.
Nexstar Names Jeffrey West GM Of WBTW
The general sales manager of the group’s CBS-MNT affiliate in Myrtle Beach-Florence, S.C., moves up to replace Randy Ingram who has moved to Nexstar’s Indianapolis duopoly.
The two station groups’ goal is to promote broadcast spectrum aggregation, innovation and monetization, in anticipation of the adoption of ATSC 3.0. They say they want to include other broadcasters in the effort to compete in wireless data transmission.
The addition of the station group expands LMC’s reach to more than half of all TV stations in the U.S.
The 24-year CBS news veteran and former Los Angeles news director to lead Nexstar’s expanding Washington news bureau.
Three legacy media executives at the Borrell Associates’ Local Online Advertising Conference in New York Monday shared what they believe were sure-fire signs of impending digital failure. Among them: Selling just time or space, salespeople need to be omni-market; not reaching for viewers on all devices; over-reliance on display advertising and ignoring pay walls.
Nexstar Thinking Ahead To Its Next Deal
“Suffice it to say that we are already in discussions, should the [FCC ownership] rules change, about opportunities that might be available to us,” Nexstar CEO Perry Sook told analysts and investors today.
Nexstar 4Q Revenue Up 23% To $310 Million
The big driver for a record fourth quarter was political of $60 million, plus a 23% gain in retrans money and $25.7 million in digital revenue.The earnings report is the first since Nexstar closed on its purchase of Media General in January. The station group says that Media General shareholders will get $479 million from the sale of spectrum in the incentive auction. Nexstar sold no spectrum of its own.
Nexstar is now hiring a bureau chief, an executive producer and three more reporters to find the local angle on Washington goings-on for the station group’s 171 stations in 100 markets. “Our intention is not to chase what the president is doing and cover it from a national perspective, says Nexstar’s Jerry Walsh. “Our intention is to cover how the story in Washington affects our local markets.
