Nexstar

Debate Night in America will feature news and analysis from NewsNation’s team of journalists, including George Will and Chris Stirewalt. Nexstar’s TV stations serving Texas, Georgia and Pennsylvania are hosting the events and also televising them locally.

The Nexstar CW affiliate will exclusively air 15 games this season and produce pre-game, halftime, and post-game programming. The broadcasts will be syndicated throughout Southern California.

The Nexstar Media Charitable Foundation, whose mission is to improve the communities where Nexstar has a TV station by contributing to public charities and nonprofit organizations, has been busy so far in 2022.

With the addition of this two-hour news program at 10 a.m.-noon ET weekdays, NewsNation’s weekly news programming increases to 96 hours.

No regulatory approval is needed for the deal, so Nexstar is immediately assuming corporate oversight of The CW. Nexstar Chairman-CEO Perry Sook says that Nexstar will take a “broadcast-first” approach to CW operations, rather than the current consideration of post-broadcast content monetization under the current studio owners Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global.

Perry Sook says that in addition to a strong trending political segment, “approximately half of our television advertising categories are pacing up for the third quarter.”

The television veteran will oversee all operations of Nexstar’s Ohio NBC affiliate, succeeding Joe Abouzeid.

Nexstar executives told the Credit Suisse virtual conference on Wednesday that it has yet to see even modest recovery from the auto sector, though it’s still finding other categories to plug the hole. The company also spoke to its M&A ambitions, the prospect of selling its Food Network stake and the mindset it’s bringing to its upcoming MVPD and network affiliate negotiations.

The new agreement covers Nexstar’s NBC affiliate WDTN Dayton, Ohio, and cable news network NewsNation.

Beginning June 27, the Nexstar cable network debuts Early Morning, a one-hour newscast hosted by Mitch Carr at 6 a.m. ET

The station group taps Mark Danielson, Joe Abouzeid and Judson Beck to lead six stations in the four markets.

While issues such as attribution, addressability and automation remain challenging, multimedia spot television campaigns are still about relationships and results, leaders from E.W. Scripps, Graham Media, Nexstar, dentsu X and Compulse told a TVNewsCheck webinar last week.

Stirewalt had been with Fox News Channel since 2010 but left after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden in the 2020 election, angering conservatives.

Core advertising, political, distribution and digital all posted year-over-year gains. Overall, television advertising grew 8.3% versus Q1 of ’21, and core television advertising of $428 million was a first-quarter record and increased 4% over the prior year quarter.

The veteran senior legal executive with 25 years of experience will join Nexstar in June, succeeding Elizabeth Ryder.

Sean Compton, president of the Nextstar’s networks division, says its nascent NewsNation network is progressing “exactly as we designed it to go,” on a trajectory to 24/7 programming, a doubled staff and future content from Nexstar-owned The Hill in the cards.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings in upper station management, marketing and creative services, news, IT, digital sales and content, engineering and graphic design.

The FCC is finally moving on a request Comcast filed nearly nine months ago, asking the agency to declare that Nexstar is in violation of the 39% cap on broadcast national audience reach. But regulatory wheels move slowly, so there’s no indication yet of what the commission might do.

As the pay TV universe shrinks, Nexstar Media Group Inc. is eyeing major revenue opportunities tied to the adoption of new broadcast technology. Chairman-CEO Perry Sook told investors at a March 14 conference that by the end of the decade, the Advance Television Systems Committee 3.0 standard, also known as Next Gen TV, may yield “spectrum monetization that could rival distribution revenue today.” In 2021, Nexstar registered distribution revenue of $2.47 billion, up 14.9% year over year.

Broadcasters widely increased their political revenue guidance for 2022 following an earnings season in which spot saw continued growth across categories except for the still-beleaguered automotive industry.

advertising, political advertising, quarterly earnings analysis

She’s promoted from senior affiliate sales director for the company’s Networks Division with responsibility for business development and affiliate partnerships with more than 15 networks providing programming across the company’s portfolio of more than 600 subchannels.

Chairman-CEO Perry Sook: “Historically, inflation has been a friend to our business because it gives us some ability, or cover, for pricing power, pricing increases.” While auto advertising continues to be challenged, Nexstar President-COO Tom Carter reported that other categories have picked up the slack.

WJZY, Nexstar’s Fox affiliate in Charlotte, N.C., is undergoing a makeover. The station has “meandered as a bottom station for a long time,” says Lloyd Bucher, WJZY’s new GM, but Nexstar sees an opportunity to change that.

ATSC 3.0 infrastructure will position TV stations to not just create their own OTT platforms, but also lease a portion of their spectrum for datacasting, location services and many other new revenue possibilities. Leading experts on monetizing NextGen TV offered their predictions and blueprints at a TVNewsCheck webinar last week sponsored by LTN Global. Above, map showing ATSC 3.0 coverage at the end of 2021 from E.W. Scripps.

It will pay $0.90 per share of its Class A common stock beginning with the dividend declared for the first quarter of 2022.

The station group promotes Shaun Newell at WMBD Peoria, Ill., and Joe McGuire at WRBL Columbus, Ga. Both are CBS affiliates.

The multiyear renewal covers CBS affiliates in 39 markets owned by Nexstar and Its operating partners.

The U.S. broadcast TV could generate as much as $15 billion a year by 2030 from the provision of datacasting services enabled by ATSC 3.0, according to a deck revealed to investors Wednesday by Nexstar Media. That’s more than the $13 billion a year broadcasters currently make from retransmission fees.

A tentative “For Sale” sign is up at The CW, and Nexstar Media Group is leading the pack of potential buyers to acquire a majority stake in the broadcaster jointly owned by ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia. Why is the nation’s largest TV station owner interested in the youngest-skewing linear broadcast network — and why now?

After putting 25 stations on the air with the new transmission technology this year, it says it plans to convert another 20 markets in 2022, bringing its coverage of U.S. TV households with ATSC 3.0 to 50%.

ATSC 3.0 infrastructure will position stations to not just create their own OTT platforms, but also lease a portion of their spectrum for datacasting needed for smart cities, enhanced GPS, infotainment, autonomous vehicle control, and a host of IoT use cases. Leading experts on monetizing NextGen TV will gather for an LTN Global webinar to be produced by TVNewsCheck. Speakers will be (clockwise from left): John Hane, president, BitPath; Kerry Oslund, VP strategy and business development, E.W. Scripps; Mark Aitken, SVP advanced technology, Sinclair Broadcast Group and president, One Media; Brett Jenkins, EVP/CTO, Nexstar Media Group; and moderator Mary Crebassa, VP major accounts, LTN Global. Register here. 

It’s been four months since Comcast filed its FCC petition asking the agency to look at whether Nexstar is in violation of the 39% broadcast audience cap, and so far, it’s been crickets.

She will oversee the group’s retransmission consent agreements with MVPDs and virtual-MVPDs, as well as content negotiations with the company’s television network partners.

The media executive with more than 25 years of broadcast management and sales experience moves from Nexstar’s WSAV Savannah, Ga., to oversee its Dallas CW affiliate.

The sales and marketing executive with 20-plus years of local broadcast experience will oversee WTWO and Mission Broadcasting’s WAWV in Indiana.

TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp talks with Dan Abrams, host of an eponymous new live show on Nexstar’s NewsNation, about drawing lines between his brand of bias and primetime cable’s penchant for left/right absolutism.