Station Group Leaders To Confront 2025’s Challenges At Local TV Strategies

Heavy concerns hang over local TV for 2025. How will it address a changing national spot TV marketplace? How will groups contend with the rising cost of producing and distributing local news? How can stations capitalize on their connected TV strategies and expand digital revenue? And how can the industry adjust its multiplatform news strategy to win younger viewers?

A group of the industry’s top executives will address these questions and many more in “Station Group Leaders on the State of the Industry,” TVNewsCheck’s hugely popular annual executive panel at Local TV Strategies, presented at the NAB Show New York on Oct. 9 at the Javits Center.

Valari Staab, chariman, NBCUniversal Local; Mike Hayes, president, Hearst Television; Jennifer Mitchell, president, stations and digital for CBS News and Stations; and Andy Alford, president, broadcast, Nexstar Media Group, will join moderator Michael Depp, chief content officer for NewsCheckMedia and editor, TVNewsCheck, for a wide-ranging conversation tackling all of the major issues facing TV station groups as it readies for a year of enormous challenges.

“There is so much in front of the industry at this moment — the prospects for national and local advertising in ’25, reverse comp fees rising as subscriber fees flatten, a stock market that seems to understand little of broadcast’s enduring value — that we’ll be inundated with subjects for this discussion,” Depp said.

“Valari, Mike, Jennifer and Andy will take on streaming and FAST strategies and investments, the primetime programming outlook and whether investments in strengthening TV news are paying off in ratings,” he added. “We’ll discuss live sports’ future, NextGen TV’s revenue prospects, the possibility of regulatory relief and whether a thaw is possible in network-affiliate relations, not to mention the thorny issue of negotiating vMVPD deals.”

Other Local TV Strategies sessions include:

Advertising Leaders on Thriving in 2025 — Media buying leaders talk about optimizing multiplatform TV advertising locally and regionally in 2025. What kind of growth do they anticipate from national spot TV? Where is the industry evolving in audience measurement and the way advertising is targeted?

Reinventing Local TV for Relevance and Revenue Growth — As the multiplatform video market continues to morph and evolve, local TV must keep pace with competitors by tapping innovations in technology, data, business models, audience, and advertiser trends. How can the industry bring legacy businesses into the future on sound economic footing? How can local TV leverage its unique value propositions while creating new ones that go beyond its core strengths? What are the major pivot points that will determine success or failure as local TV transforms, and what can broadcasters expect ahead for ad revenue, retrans and even reverse comp?

Advanced Streaming and FAST Revenue Strategies for Local TV — How can broadcasters push past legacy thinking to open new revenue opportunities on their AVOD and FAST channels? Where are the revenue prospects beyond programmatic, and how can they be realized? Who are the sellers most effectively connecting with advertisers on streaming, and why are they succeeding?

Mining NextGen TV for Revenue ROI in 2025 — CFOs, technology and revenue leaders assess emerging sources of revenue in datacasting, targeted advertising, personalization and audience measurement. How much revenue will come in 2025? When will it be transformative for ROI and consumers’ perception of local TV?

AI and Building Tomorrow’s Station Group — How can station groups retrofit their existing organizations as leaner and more efficient using generative AI for sales, marketing, operations and content creation? How can they make aggressive efforts to upscale their employees as more AI-fluent and productive? A guide to existing technologies and practices groups can adopt to capitalize on gen AI’s current capacities and be more competitive in the multiplatform environment.

Lightning Round: AI & Local TV’s Future — Leaders and futurists from AI technology providers specializing in the media offer brief takes on how artificial intelligence can streamline workflows in content creation, sales, operations and management. 

Keynote Interview: Blueprints for a New Local TV News — Sean McLaughlin, VP of news at Graham Media Group, outlines a vision for local TV news that culls its irrelevant sacred cows, reallocates resources toward original new ideas and empowers disruptive thinkers. In this keynote interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp, McLaughlin presents a radical paradigm for news — and a path to its implementation — with a new frame for reporters, meteorologists, anchors, producers and news leaders to do their jobs and the ROI potential that can follow the change. 

AI Tour of the NAB Show New York Exhibit Hall — TVNewsCheck’s VIP tour of AI providers on the NAB Show New York exhibit floor offers opportunities to see the technology in action, ask questions and brainstorm with futurists.

Register here for Local TV Strategies.