Nexstar

Nexstar taps the award-winning former ABC News senior executive producer of Good Morning America and ABC World News for a new executive position at its nascent cable news network.

“Looking ahead, we’re encouraged by the overall acceleration in economic activity and the improved trajectory of ad spending across our footprint as market conditions continue to improve,” CEO Perry Sook told analysts this morning.

The increase to $1.1 billion from 1Q 2020 was boosted by a higher distribution fee revenue (up 13%) and digital revenue growth of 18%. Core ad revenue was down 1.4%.

The new multicast network will air classic TV hits from the 1980s and 1990s designed to attract Gen X viewers, much like its Antenna TV does for baby boomers with its 1960s and ’70s programming.

Sports wagering has invigorated station groups’ core revenue, climbing to the second-biggest ad sales category for many of them and angling to knock automotive from its top spot in the next few years. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Kimberly Byrd, Ben Oldham and Robert Raff move up in Knoxville, Tenn.; Roanoke, Va;  and Myrtle Beach, S.C., respectively.

Facebook overwhelmingly is the most important social media platform for TV stations, say executives for CBS stations, E.W. Scripps, Nexstar, NBCU stations, Fox stations and Meredith. Broadcasters’ relationship with the platform once widely viewed as a “frenemy” continues to evolve, though the opacity of its all-important algorithm still frustrates. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Jennifer Lyons, the VP of news at Nexstar’s rebranded cable news channel NewsNation resigned Tuesday amid concerns it will take a right-wing turn because of low ratings.

The 36-year broadcasting veteran is stepping down on June 1. He served in multiple leadership roles over 20 years as Nexstar grew to become the nation’s largest broadcaster.

Blake Russell, EVP of stations operations and content development for Nexstar, has spent the past pandemic year building out a new newsroom, studios and infrastructure for NewsNation. Along the way, he’s been eliminating holdover technology from the company’s Tribune acquisition and built a novel, enterprise-level content sharing tool. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Content management systems are the workhorses of local stations’ digital operations. Executives from Tegna, NBCU, CBS, Gray, Nexstar and Fox have discovered that user simplicity and integrations for multiplatform distribution have become essential attributes. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Jeff Moriarty, most recently senior VP, consumer products at Gannett/USA Today Network, will manage Nexstar’s portfolio of digital destinations across product, engineering and audience development.

Nexstar’s cable network gets a new name and will add two hours of news programming on weeknights beginning March 1 with Early Edition and The Donlon Report joining Banfield.

Scripps purchased WPIX as part of its acquisition of eight television stations in seven markets from Nexstar. Those stations were being divested in connection with Nexstar Media Group’s acquisition of Tribune Media in September 2019. Scripps granted Nexstar the option to buy back WPIX. The option expired at the end of 2021. Nexstar assigned its option to Mission Broadcasting, and Mission exercised the option.

Dish Network and Nexstar Media Group, the No. 1 U.S. owner of local TV stations, have resolved a carriage dispute that took 164 Nexstar stations and cable network WGN America off the air for more than three weeks. The deal was announced just after 1 a.m. ET on Friday, Christmas Day.

The debut on KDVR and KWGN marks the company’s 12^th market and 22^nd station to roll out ATSC 3.0 in this year. Nexstar plans to convert 32 more stations in 20 additional markets in 2021

Nexstar Media has begun criticizing Dish Network in commercials on its stations as the retransmission dispute that has blacked out channels in 115 markets enters its third week.

Trends driven by the pandemic are likely to persist into 2021 and beyond, while transitions to IP infrastructures will accelerate and aging on-prem infrastructure will give way to increased reliance on the cloud. NextGen TV will also likely pick up speed after COVID’s cooling effect on its rollout this year.

Retransmission consent battles have become as much of a year-end tradition as eggnog and holly, and 2020 is no different, with at least two disputes brewing and certainly more to come. Tegna and Nexstar kicked off this year’s station negotiation season with blackouts.

The new agreement makes Nexstar’s cable network available to more than 3 million new streaming subscribers in 2021.

TV stations are still hiring during the pandemic, but HR executives say they’ve had to get creative in their largely virtual environments, turning to social media and marketing tools to fill key positions, particularly account executives, producers and executive producers.

On the heels of reporting record results for the third quarter, fueled by even better-than-expected political ad sales, Nexstar Media Group Chairman-CEO Perry Sook told Wall Street analysts this morning […]

Nexstar Media Group announced today that its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.56 per share of its Class A common stock. The dividend is payable on Friday, Nov. 20, to shareholders of record on Friday, Nov. 6.

Nexstar’s new national newscast shows promise with its polish and presentation, but to really compete in the ratings it needs an earlier start time and more resources behind it.

Nexstar Media Group announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nexstar Broadcasting, intends to offer, subject to market and other customary conditions, up to $1 billion in aggregate principal amount of new senior notes due 2028 in a private offering. The notes will be Nexstar’s senior unsecured obligations and will be guaranteed by the company, Mission Broadcasting Inc. and “certain of Nexstar’s and Mission’s existing and future restricted subsidiaries on a senior unsecured basis.” Nexstar said it intends to use the proceeds to redeem all of its 5.625% senior unsecured notes due 2024, with the remainder to be used for “general corporate purposes.”

The station group chooses the management, sales, programming and marketing executive with 25 years of local broadcasting experience to lead WIVT, WBGH Binghamton and WETM Elmira-Corning.

Nexstar stations are said to be apoplectic over the decision by CNN to terminate its video sharing agreement with the company’s 197 affiliates. The move came in retaliation for a Nexstar corporate edict that its stations withhold breaking news video from competing networks so NewsNation can have it first.

Perry A. Sook, Nexstar chairman, president and CEO, said: “The expanded repurchase authorization reflects our confidence in the company’s growing free cash flow from operations and our long-term commitment to deploying capital in a manner that can enhance shareholder value.”

The new live daily three-hour newscast features 150 dedicated reporters and staff; will leverage the knowledge of 5,400 local journalists from Nexstar’s 110 newsrooms. It will be available to 75 million U.S. television households.

Nexstar has promised its forthcoming national newscast, News Nation, will be completely absent of bias and that it will bring on rhetoricians to ensure it. The reality of bias in TV news is much murkier to root out, stemming from the industry’s favoring of stories that are quick, easy and inexpensive to produce.

Nexstar will launch a new national newscast this fall, drawing in part from its 110 news-producing stations, but individual stations will have the autonomy to chart their own news course, says Susan Tully, SVP of local content development.

It promotes Mike Lee to VP-GM of its KWKT-KYLE Waco-Temple-Bryan, and chooses Mark Garcia to succeed Lee as leader of KMID Midland.

Everything’s bigger in Texas. Even investigative journalism. Find out why KXAN Austin’s latest investigation involved almost two dozen people in news, digital, production and marketing, and how the station balances that content on TV and digital platforms across all the Nexstar stations in the Lone Star State.

The group’s stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, Salt Lake City, Honolulu, and Bakersfield, Calif., become the “Official Home of Raiders’ Football” in their markets.