TVN’s Top 30 Station Groups: A Volatile Year Delivered Few Changes

Given the moribund TV station trading market and FCC resistance to any further significant industry consolidation, it comes as no surprise that this year’s TVNewsCheck Top 30 TV station group looks like last year’s, except for a few minor changes. (Scripps moved up one position to No. 9 and Bonneville bumped out Manship to claim the No. 30 spot.)

In the ranking by 2023 revenue, Nexstar once again was at the top ($4.8 billion) with Gray ($3.1 billion), Tegna ($2.9 billion), Sinclair ($2.7 billion) and Fox ($2.5 billion) bunched far behind and rounding out the top five.

The Big 3 — CBS, NBC and ABC — aren’t that big anymore, coming in sixth, seventh and eighth, respectively.

For five publicly traded companies on the chart that break out their TV broadcasting financials — Nexstar, Gray, Tegna, Sinclair and E.W. Scripps — the chart drew revenue and home coverage figures straight out of their annual reports.

For the other 25 groups, the chart relied on revenue and coverage estimates from BIA Advisory Services, a Chantilly, Va.-based research and investment firm.

In all, the Top 30 account for $28.9 billion in revenue, most of the industry’s entire revenue.

BIA tracks station group ownership and uses information from individual stations and markets — in addition to historical data — to generate its ad revenue estimates. Its retransmission consent estimates are derived by modeling the revenue of public companies and other public information.

Actual coverage is the percentage of the estimated 125 million TV homes the group reaches. It’s the relevant one for all practical business purposes.

The FCC coverage is for regulatory purposes. The FCC rules cap the aggregate reach of station groups at 39% of TV homes, but discounts the coverage of UHF stations by half. That allows groups to extend their reach to as much as 78% of homes depending on its mix of VHF and UHF stations. Three groups — Nexstar, TelevisaUnivision and Scripps — have used the discount to exceed the 39% cap as the chart shows. However, the current FCC is unlikely to approve any new mergers that exceed 39%, despite the discount.

Note that the BIA’s estimates of household coverage are based on data from the research firm Woods & Poole Economics and should not be used for calculating coverage for regulatory purposes.

Editor’s note. An earlier version of the following chart incorrectly had Bonneville listed as No. 13 instead of Graham Media.

TVNewsCheck’s Top 30 TV Station Groups

Data courtesy of BIA Advisory Services

Group	Markets	Actual Coverage (%)	FCC Coverage (%)	OTA Rev. 2023 ($Millions)	Retrans Rev. 2023 ($Millions)	Total Rev. 2023 ($Millions)
1 Nexstar	117	70%	38.9%	$2,121	$2,727	$4,848
2 Gray	121	33.2	25.0	1,593	1,532	3,125
3 Tegna	52	38.4	31.6	1,336	1,528	2,864
4 Sinclair	85	39.0	23.7	1,236	1,491	2,727
5 Fox	18	38.5	26.1	1,348	1,177	2,525
6 CBS (Paramount)	18	37.5	24.3	1,345	978	2,323
7 NBC (Comcast)	31	38.1	20.1	1,231	887	2,118
8 ABC (Disney)	8	22.1	20.4	896	627	1,523
9 Scripps	76	68.5	38.7	632	752	1,384
10 Hearst	27	18.5	13.8	673	566	1,239
11 TelevisaUni.	25	44.9	23.7	498	718	1,216
12 Cox Media	9	10.7	5.3	358	304	662
13 Graham	6	7.1	4.0	348	194	542
14 Allen Media	21	4.7	3.2	136	128	264
15 Sunbeam	2	3.5	2.5	145	49	194
16 Hubbard	7	3.1	2.1	98	75	173
17 Weigel	26	27.2	17.4	119	22	141
18 INSP	12	2.3	1.6	77	62	139
19 Capitol	2	1.1	0.5	67	52	119
20 Entravision	24	13.5	8.2	81	34	115
21 News-Press	10	1.6	0.9	69	40	109
22 Berkshire-Hathaway	1	1.4	1.4	73	27	100
23 Griffin	2	1.0	0.5	54	27	81
24 Bahakel	5	2.0	1.2	51	29	80
25Morgan Murphy	9	1.4	1.2	52	27	79
26 Lockwood	8	2.1	1.8	36	33	69
26 Block	4	0.9	0.5	45	24	69
28 Morris	6	1.4	0.9	32	31	63
29 Estrella	6	9.7	7.9	52	0	52
30 Bonneville	1	0.9	0.5	25	21	46