Nexstar Rolls Up Its 3 CMS Units Into Lakana

Over the past three years, Nexstar Broadcasting has acquired three providers of content management systems to publishers, advertisers and TV stations — Inergize Digital, Internet Broadcasting Systems and The Enterprise Technology Group.

As of today, the three companies are now one. Nexstar has rolled them into Lakana, a new operating unit based St. Paul, Minn., and headed by President Phillip Hyun, the former CEO of The Enterprise Technology Group, which markets the EndPlay CMS.

“We are looking to leverage the assets and the people from all three companies to create a bigger and better company that will our serve existing customers in the local media market as well as the broad publishing market as a whole,” Hyun says.

All told, Lakana’s client roll includes 300 TV stations, newspapers, magazines and brands delivering nearly six billion advertising impressions per month. Aside from Nexstar, its broadcast clients include Hearst Television, Graham Media, Scripps, Schurz, Hubbard and Bonten Media

“Our objective is to work with publishers to eliminate the friction and complexity of their digital businesses so that they can focus on engaging audiences and maximizing revenues across every available channel,” Hyun says.

Hyun joined Nexstar a year ago when the station group purchased The Enterprise Technology Group. He was CEO of Enterprise at the time. He has more than 20 years of combined digital technology development and executive experience.

Lakana begins life with 150 employees. The consolidation produced no layoffs, Hyun says. In fact, the company is looking for tech help, he says. “We are really investing in building and continuing to expand the R&D on our product offerings.”

According to Hyun, the Inergize platform is being phased out. Its users, principally the Nexstar stations, are moving to EndPlay.

Decisions on if and when to merge the IB and EndPlay platforms have not be made. However, he says, the engineering and operational teams of the two platforms have already been merged.

Lakana will maintain IB’s 24/7 news desk, which provides national and international news to clients, at least for the present. “That side of that business we are evaluating and we will look at where and how we’re going to grow it, see where that takes us as a part of our many service offerings.”

Lakana has no interest in resurrecting IB’s ad network, Hyun says. “We will not be selecting or selling advertising. “

Nexstar picked up Ingerize with the 10 TV stations it bought from Newport Television in 2012. It acquired IB, founded by a group of broadcasters, including Hearst, in 1996 for $20 million last year.