Nexstar Media Group said stations it owns in five more markets will become affiliates of The CW, the Nexstar-owned network, starting in September and October.

The CW will be carried on digital subchannels of WJBF, Augusta, Georgia; KARD, Monroe, Louisiana; KFDX, Wichita Falls, Texas; WTWO, Terre Haute, Indiana; and WFXV, Utica, New York.

On each station, The CW replaces a digital multicast network owned by E.W. Scripps, either Ion, Bounce or Laff. Scripps announced earlier this year that it would be dropping CW affiliates in several markets.

The CW previously had affiliates in each of those markets.

Nexstar has said that having The CW on its owned station creates economic benefits for the company.

“The addition of these affiliates will bring the number of Nexstar- and partner-owned CW stations to 54, covering more than 45% of U.S. TV households,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. 

“As The CW’s No. 1 affiliate group, Nexstar is very pleased to be airing the network’s programming on these stations this fall, especially with NASCAR Xfinity series racing and the WWE’s NXT joining a very robust lineup of sports programming, including LIV Golf and ACC college football and basketball, and Pac-12 football,” Alford said. “Adding The CW’s programming to these stations will offer advertisers a variety of new linear and digital opportunities to reach millions of viewers.” 

Nexstar Media Group collected $10.5 million in retransmission-consent fees from DirecTV by fraudulently withholding information about one of its stations, a New York State appeals court ruled on Thursday.

Nexstar had appealed a July ruling by the New York State Supreme Court after DirecTV sued Nexstar to recover those fees.

The case revolved around a new distribution agreement in which Nexstar received fees to carry a station then-known as WHAG, an NBC affiliate in Hagerstown, Maryland.

DirecTV pays station groups for affiliates of the Big Four networks. It usually does not pay for independent stations, the two sides testified.

NBC told Nexstar WHAG would be losing its affiliation, but Nexstar kept that fact from DirecTV while the new deal was being negotiated and continued to collect fees after the station became an independent station and changed its call letters to in 2016, one year into the agreement. The station is now known as WDVM. 

When it found out about the change, DirecTV said it would stop paying the fee for the station and asked Nexstar to return the fees it has received while the station was independent. Nexstar refused and DirecTV filed its lawsuit.

The Supreme Court denied Nexstar’s motion for a summary judgment dismissing the complaint. It granted DirecTV’s motion for summary judgment on its breach of contract claims, but denied a motion for a summary judgment on a claim of fraudulent inducement.

“Supreme Court should have granted summary judgment in plaintiff’s favor on its fraudulent inducement cause of action,” the appeals court ruled.

Also Read: DOJ Tells Appeals Court to Reinstate DirecTV’s Antitrust Suit Against Nexstar

Despite what the court called Nexstar’s “unproven, self-serving contentions” that it expected the NBC affiliation to be renewed, “there was unrebutted testimony from two NBC employees who testified that NBC advised defendant that there would be no further extensions.”

Nexstar “knew that the termination of the NBC affiliation was a fait accompli and intentionally concealed this information from plaintiff,” the appeals court said in its ruling.

Nexstar filed documents that some of its stations would be losing NBC affiliations, but did not include WHAG in the documents.

“Defendant misrepresented in these documents that defendant expected the network affiliations of its stations to be renewed,” the court said. “As plaintiff did not have access to the relevant information, it reasonably relied on the fraudulent representations of defendant to its detriment.”

Nexstar Media Group reported higher second-quarter net income as it cut losses at The CW.

Net income rose  to $118 million, or $3.54 a share, from $96 million, or $2.64 a share, a year ago. 

Losses at The CW were reduced by $33 million, compared to a year ago, the company said. Revenue rose 2.3% to a record $1.3 billion. 

Distribution revenue increased 5.5% to $734 million.

Advertising revenue was up 2.2% to $522 million. Non-political advertising was down $24 million, while political advertising was up $45 million. 

“Nexstar delivered another period of solid financial results, building on our strong start to the year,“ CEO Perry Sook said. “Following a first quarter in which Nexstar generated record first-quarter distribution and total net revenue, we did it again, generating our highest-ever second-quarter distribution and total net revenue.

“During the quarter, we continued executing on our plan at The CW, reducing operating losses by $33 million year-over-year and $83 million year-to-date as our organizational and programming changes are driving improved cash flows and the third consecutive quarter of ratings growth in primetime entertainment programming,” he said.

“Looking ahead, we expect to benefit from anticipated record levels of political spending on broadcast television in the second half of the year,” Sook said.

Nexstar Media Group said it appointed Ellen Johnson to its board of directors, effective Oct.1.

Johnson is executive VP and chief financial officer for ad agency holding company Interpublic Group of Cos. 

She will be the 10th member of the Nexstar board and will serve as one of nine independent directors. Three of the independent directors are women, Nexstar noted.

Johnson will stand for election at Nexstar’s 2025 annual meeting.

“She is an integral member of IPG’s executive team with an established record of success in the advertising and marketing services industries,” Nexstar chairman and CEO Perry Sook said. “Her extensive leadership experience in accounting, corporate finance and information technology, combined with her expertise in all areas of ESG will be invaluable to Nexstar as we continue to advance our business and execute on the company’s goals to enhance shareholder value.”

Before becoming CFO at IPG, she was senior VP of finance and treasurer at the company. Johnson is a CPA who holds an executive MBA in finance from New York University Stern School of Business and a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Albany.

“Nexstar is a scaled media and entertainment business with a unique portfolio of local and national assets, including NewsNation, The CW and The Hill,” Johnson said. “I look forward to sharing my experience with the Board and management team as the company pursues its continued growth.”

The CW has found new affiliates in Detroit and Miami and one looks a lot like its old affiliate in Detroit.

Nexstar, which acquired control of The CW from Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery in 2022, said it signed a new affiliation deal with Paramount’s CBS News and Stations that not only renews the agreements with the 40 CBS affiliates Nexstar owns, but makes Paramount-owned stations WKBD Detroit and WBFS Miami affiliates of The CW, effective September 1.

WKBD had been The CW affiliate before a recent round of corporate musical chairs that played out in Detroit and other markets.

The agreement solves a problem that was developing for Nexstar in ensuring The CW was carried in every local market.

The merry-go-round started when Paramount, which retained a 12.5% stake in the The CW, decided to turn its eight CW affiliates — including WKBD — into independent stations last year. 

E.W Scripps Co.-owned stations including WMYD Detroit and WSFL Miami, became The CW affiliates, but in April it was announced those stations would be dropping the network.

Nexstar was able to replace many of the Paramount and Scripps affiliates with stations it owns or manages, but the situation in Detroit and Miami seemed to be going down to the wire because few full-powered stations were available.

WADL, Detroit, owned by Adell Broadcasting, nearly became the CW affiliate in Motor City, but an agreement for WADL to be acquired by Mission Broadcasting for $75 million in a deal that would have been financed by Nexstar, which would also run the station under management agreements. The deal was terminated after the Federal Communications Commission approved the acquisition but imposed conditions that would have prevented Nexstar from controlling the stations.

Nexstar manages Mission stations in several markets.

Kevin Adell, CEO of Adell Broadcasting, said last week he was still discussing a potential deal with the CW.

Financial terms of Nexstar’s deal with Paramount were not disclosed. 

Paramount said that WBFS and WKBD would be carrying The CW’s news, primetime entertainment, live sports and special event programming.

Nexstar’s new CBS affiliation deal also covers two stations owned by Mission Broadcasting that are managed by Nexstar.

The 42 CBS affiliates that Nexstar runs reach nearly 19 million television households or about 15% of the U.S. audience.

Two months after his deal to sell WADL Detroit for $75 million and have it become a CW affiliate was terminated, Kevin Adell of Adell Broadcasting is getting into sports.

WADL has made a deal with Gray Television to air a live broadcast of the Harlem Globetrotters taking on the American Dream on August 18, Adell told Broadcasting+Cable. 

Gray’s Raycom Sports unit is producing the telecast, which will appear on Gray stations in about 90 markets. Gray confirmed WADL would be airing the Globetrotter event.

Adell has also been talking to senior executives at the Detroit Pistons of the NBA about carrying Pistons games locally if the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group, which runs the Bally Sports regional sports networks, folds.

Adell agreed to sell WADL to Mission Broadcasting in 2023. Mission’s bid was financed in part by Nexstar Media Group, which owns The CW. Nexstar planned to run WADL under a series of management agreements and make the station into The CW affiliate in Detroit.

The deal fell through when the FCC put conditions on the deal that would have prevented Nexstar from financing the deal or managing the stations. In a previous ruling, the FCC ordered Mission to sell WPIX New York, because a similar arrangement with Nexstar gave Nexstar de facto control over WPIX.

That control would put Nexstar over the television station ownership cap, according to the FCC, which also fined Nexstar and Mission. 

With the breakdown of the regional sports network business, a number of leagues and teams are putting local games on broadcast stations, looking to reach more potential fans.

Sports makes sense because “that’s where the eyeballs are” in linear TV, Adell said.

If Pistons games become available, Gray would be a good partner because Raycom could produce the games. While Gray doesn’t own a station in Detroit, it has other stations in Michigan that could provide additional carriage for Pistons games.

Since the deal with Mission fell apart, Adell has been getting ready to program the station as an independent, added the first-run The Jason Show from Fox and Access Daily from NBCUniversal, plus off-net series like Suits, Chicago P.D., and Bob Hearts Abishola.

The station could operate with or without The CW affiliation, Adell said.

“I have had conversations with The CW since the Mission deal was terminated, but nothing concrete yet,” he said. “My position is pretty clear. I have got to get paid.”

In many situations, stations pay programming fees to networks as part of their affiliation agreements. But in Detroit, there are only seven full-power stations that could air The CW’s sports portfolio in high definition. 

That may give Adell leverage because the deal with The CW’s current affiliate, E.W. Scripps-owned WMYD, expires at the end of August and Nexstar has few good alternatives if it wants The CW to be on the air in Detroit, a big market and an influential one because of the presence of the auto industry.

“Everyone says content is king, but without distribution, you’re just kidding yourself,” Adell said, who built WADL after getting a construction permit from the FCC 34 years ago.

The U.S. Justice Department filed an friend-of-the-court briefing earlier this week, asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate DirecTV’s antitrust suit against Nexstar Media Group and two smaller station groups.

Also read: DirecTV To Appeal Judge’s Decision To Toss Its Nexstar Antitrust Case

DirecTV accused Nexstar of conspiring to fix broadcast retransmission license fees through management services agreements with smaller station groups Mission Broadcasting and White Knight. 

Back on March 20, U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York dismissed DirecTV's case. He ruled that any financial injury DirecTV suffered as a result wasn't caused by any price-fixing conducted by Nexstar, Mission or White Knight. Rather, damages resulted from DirecTV’s decision not to do business, starting in 2022, with Mission and White Knight stations … with the subsequent loss of programming causing DirecTV customers to unsubscribe. 

The DOJ believes Castel applied the wrong legal framework here, and it has asked the court overseeing DirecTV's appeal to “correct the district court’s erroneous holding in its antitrust-standing analysis that the sole type of injury for which a private consumer plaintiff can recover in a price-fixing case is the payment of supracompetitive prices.

“The harms from a price-fixing conspiracy are not so limited,” the DOJ added. “Price fixing corrupts the competitive process, and that anticompetitive harm can result in various antitrust injuries, such as reduced output and decreased quality, in addition to increased prices.”

DirecTV has accused of turning the smaller Mission and White Knight into "sidecars," negotiating retransmission consent for their 27 stations in 25 designated marketing areas in which Nexstar already manages duopolies. 

Nexstar Media Group said it promoted Olivia Pennington and Britt Milstead to VP and general manager, effective immediately.

Pennington will run Nexstar’s stations in Huntsville, Alabama: CBS affiliate WHNT and CW affiliate WHDF. 

Milstead will manage KLBK, the CBS affiliate in Lubbock, Texas, and will oversee Nexstar’s agreement to operate KAMC, ABC’s Mission Broadcasting-owned Lubbock affiliate.

Both execs had been senior sales execs at Nexstar owned stations.

“Olivia and Britt are outstanding leaders within the company’s management ranks,”  Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said. 

“Each has been successful at driving revenue and profitability, developing highly collaborative sales teams, and creating customized solutions for their advertising clients,” Alford said. Nexstar is fortunate to have a deep bench of talented, experienced executives, and it is gratifying to watch their continued advancement at the company. Identifying leaders and promoting from within is critical to our ongoing success.

Pennington had been director of sales for WHNT and WHDF since 2022. Before that, she held posts at WRBL in Columbus, Georgia. In her new post, she reports to Mike Vaughn, senior VP and regional manager for Nexstar’s broadcasting division.

She succeeds Stan Pylant, who retired.

Milstead most recently had been director of sales for KFDX, KJTL and KJBO in Wichita Falls, Texas. He will report to Tracey Rogers, senior VP and regional manager for Nexstar’s broadcasting division.

He succeeds Cindy Gilstrap, who retired.

WGN Chicago said VP and general manager Paul Rennie will retire on August 31. The Nexstar Media Group-owned station has not yet named his successor. 

Rennie has been GM of the station since 2016. 

During his tenure, the station expanded its local news output, launching a 6 p.m. newscast and adding morning and late evening weekend newscasts. He also oversaw the debut of weekday lifestyle shows Daytime Chicago and Spotlight Chicago.

“It has truly been a great run, and I am filled with a mix of emotions as I prepare to leave this very special place,” Rennie said.

“Working at WGN-TV has been an honor and a privilege, made even more so by the talented, dedicated, and passionate individuals who work here,“ Rennie said. ”Their hard work and commitment have inspired me every day. I am proud of everything we accomplished together and confident that WGN’s legacy of unbiased local news and its long-time connection to the greater Chicago community is in good hands with Nexstar.”

Rennie will be signing off on a 40-year career in broadcasting. Before joining WGN, he served as GM of WTTV and WXIN, both Indianapolis. He also served as general sales manger at KCPQ and KZJO in Seattle.

Lloyd Bucher has been named VP and general manager of WPHL Philadelphia, the Nexstar Media Group-owned The CW affiliate in the market. He succeeds Vince Giannini, who has retired. Bucher starts immediately and reports to Brandin Stewart, senior VP and regional manager for Nexstar’s broadcasting division. 

Bucher was born and raised in Philadelphia. He’s been VP and general manager at WJZY-WMYT Charlotte, also part of Nexstar, for almost three years. Nexstar said he was behind the launch of the stations’ Queen City News branding, and spearheaded the creation and development of morning lifestyle show Positively Charlotte, which debuts this summer. 

“Nexstar is extremely fortunate to be able to bring someone with Lloyd’s experience back to his hometown to manage the company’s broadcast and digital operations,” Stewart said. “Lloyd has been successful everywhere he’s worked and consistently driven growth in ratings, revenue and profit by seizing opportunities to forge new relationships with advertisers and marketers, creating and developing new programming, and deepening his connection to the local community. He will be a great leader for our Philly media businesses.” 

Before his time in Charlotte, Bucher was VP and general manager at WPTV West Palm Beach from 2015 to 2021. He has also worked at stations in Miami and Philadelphia. He began his professional career as an attorney. 

“I am grateful to Nexstar for bringing me back to Philadelphia, my hometown,” said Bucher. “I’m truly happy to be returning to a market I know well and looking forward to working with the broadcast and digital teams at WPHL-TV. This station has a long history of quality programming, special coverage of important local events and service to the community, and when you combine all that with the resources of Nexstar, you can create a lot of opportunity for success.” 

Lawyers for Mission Broadcasting have sent a letter to Adell Broadcasting demanding that Adell immediately return a $250,000 deposit that was part of the payment for Mission’s purchase of WADL, which was terminated last month.

In response, Adell said their were inaccuracies in the letter from Mission. Adell also raised a conflict-of-interest issue because Mission’s law firm, Wiley Rein, has also represented Adell for years.

“In fact, Wiley sent an invoice yesterday for legal work it recently performed for Adell Broadcasting. As such, Wiley has a conflict with respect to this matter,” said Robert Huth Jr. of KIrk, Huth, Lange & Badalamenti, who described himself in the response letter as Adell’s litigation counsel.

“Once new counsel is available to represent Mission Broadcasting, I will review the facts raised in your June 13, 2024, correspondence,” Huth wrote to Mission. “Until then, Adell Broadcasting is raising this conflict issue and requests that the Wiley firm refrain from any further involvement in this matter.”

Mission said it had no comment on the situation.  The lawyer for Mission did not return a call requesting a comment.

Kevin Adell, founder and CEO of Adell Broadcasting, told Broadcasting+Cable he has no intention of returning Mission’s deposit.

Adell said that he spent considerable time and money trying to consummate the $75 million sale of WADL to Mission, which works with Nexstar Media Group and would have turned WADL into an affiliate of Nexstar’s The CW network.

Nexstar is also a Wiley client.

Adell reiterated that he might take legal action against Mission  as a result of the inability to close Mission’s purchase of WADL. Nexstar chairman and CEO Perry Sook will be included in the suit as an agent for Mission, Adell said.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the sale of WADL to Mission, but imposed conditions. Those conditions would have prevented Mission from letting Nexstar run the station under local marketing and management agreements as Mission and Nexstar had planned.

The FCC had previously ordered Mission to sell WPIX New York, which Nexstar runs and programs under management and marketing agreements.

The FCC said that those agreements gave Nexstar “de facto” control over WPIX and that controlling WPIX put Nexstar over the limit for how many stations one company can own.

Adell claimed that Mission and Nexstar misrepresented the FCC’s investigation into the WPIX purchase, insisting it was no big deal and would not impact closing the purchase of WADL.

He added that Nexstar still needs to find a station to carry The CW’s programming in Detroit come September, when its current affiliation agreement with WMYD, owned by the E.W. Scripps Co., expires.

In its letter to Kevin Adell and Adell Broadcasting chief financial officer Ralph Lameti, Mission’s attorney said failing to return the deposit “constitutes an unjustifiable and bad-faith breach of the Purchase Agreement, and will subject Adell and both of you personally to significant liability in any litigation to recover the Deposit.” 

The letter also says that Mission received an email from Lameti saying Adell is “intentionally withholding ‘sign off on the escrow termination.’ ”

Lameti said that the funds would be sent to a North Carolina court on June 28, the letter from Mission states.

 The deposit money has been held in escrow in North Carolina.

"In the event the Deposit is subjected to North Carolina court proceedings, Mission will seek to hold Adell responsible for all costs and expenses incurred to recover the Deposit — including attorneys’ fees,” the letter said.

The letter concluded, “We hope we can resolve this matter without resort to litigation.”

KRON San Francisco launched a 4 p.m. newscast June 3, meaning the station’s weekday local coverage now goes from 2 to 7 p.m. Vicki Liviakis and Grant Lodes anchor the new newscast, and the 5 and 6 p.m. weekday programs as well. 

The chief meteorologist is Lawrence Karnow, sports director is Jason Dumas and the KRON political anchor is Catherine Heenan. 

Dan Thorn, KRON weekend anchor, has moved to weekdays. Thorn has been with KRON since 2018. He was promoted to weekend anchor in 2022.  

Thorn and Noelle Bellow anchor the 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts, along with the 8 p.m. streaming newscast on mobile news product KRONOn. “I’m so honored to be taking on such an important role here at KRON4 News,” Thorn said. “Joining the evening anchor team is an incredible opportunity at this legendary Bay Area TV station. I truly love the unique, beautiful and diverse communities we get to report on. I also love the hardworking people of KRON4. I'm excited to move into this new position as we continue to be ‘The Bay Area’s Local News Station.’ ”

Nexstar owns the station, an affiliate of both The CW and MyNetworkTV in DMA No. 10.

"With the launch of our expanded newscast lineup, and addition of Dan Thorn to our evening anchor team, we continue our commitment to being the local source for Bay Area news,” KRON news director Joshua Palefsky said.

Mission Broadcasting has sent a letter to Adell Broadcasting terminating Mission’s agreement to purchase WADL Detroit for $75 million.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the WADL license transfer, but imposed a number of conditions that made the deal unpalatable to Adell and to Nexstar Media Group, which helped finance the deal and would have run the station under a series of management agreements.

The FCC imposed its conditions after ordering Mission to sell WPIX New York, because it would be under the “de facto control” of Nexstar under a similar set of agreements.

Also Read: Owner of WADL Detroit Urges Mission To Close Station Purchase

“The FCC order expressly prohibits Mission from entering into certain of the sharing agreements and mandates material modifications to certain of the sharing agreements,” Mission CEO Dennis Thatcher said in the letter. “The FCC order likewise constitutes an order that prohibits the consummation of the sales of the purchase asset contemplated by the purchase agreement because it imposes conditions on consummation that were not contemplated.”

Mission also issues a statement regarding WADL. 

"Mission is very disappointed that Detroit’s television viewers will not receive the high-quality programming and public service that Mission’s ownership of WADL would have brought to the market. However, Mission felt compelled to take this action taking into account the Media Bureau’s recent decision to 'approve' Mission’s purchase only if Mission complied with a number of conditions which fundamentally rewrote the terms of the transaction. In light of the termination of the purchase agreement, Mission is also notifying the FCC today that it rejects the agency’s conditions and will not close the transaction."

Mission would have made WADL a The CW affiliate. Terminating the deal leaves Nexstar without a Detroit affiliate for its CW network next season. 

Mission cited a clause in its purchase agreement with Adell that says the deal can be terminated if conditions were placed on FCC approval.

But Adell Broadcasting CEO Kevin Adell, who built WADL, said he believes Mission broke the agreement.

“I think they violated the contract because they didn’t use their best effort” to get the deal past the FCC, Adell said.

He added that when he talked to Mission president Dennis Thatcher, Perry Sook, CEO of Nexstar and former Nexstar president Tom Carter, “They never told me the severity of their problem with the FCC,” Adell said. “So before I signed the contract it was really fraudulent inducement.”

Adell did not say whether he planned to sue Mission or Nexstar.

“I had a deal to sell the station for $75 million,” he said. “I wasted a year of my time and legal fees. I'm kind of tired of Perry Sook.”

Adell said that Nexstar and Mission still have two problems now that the deal to acquire WADL has fallen through.

The first is finding an affiliate for The CW in Detroit, which has been at several stations, including WADL, in the past few years.

Adell said there are no full-power stations left in the market for The CW to turn to. Being on a digital multicast channel is no good because those aren’t rated by Nielsen, which makes it hard to sell advertising. Also, the sports that Nexstar has acquired for The CW won’t look good in standard definition on a digital channel.

“I believe the need is still there,“ Adell said. “He needs the station and he needs to clear Detroit by August 31.” 

If Nexstar still thinks it can find a way to buy WADL, “the price isn’t going to be $75 million,” he said. 

The other problem for Nexstar and Mission is that the conditions the FCC put on the acquisition have disappeared because the deal was terminated.

Those conditions will make it difficult for Mission to buy more stations and have Nexstar run them. 

“Any time Mission goes to buy a station down the road, those six conditions are going to come up,” Adell said.

The conditions might also threaten the “sidecar” stations Mission already owns that are managed by Nexstar, he added.

Perry Sook, founder and CEO of broadcast giant Nexstar Media Group, isn’t a fan of streaming.

“The main reason we’re not in streaming is because we just don’t think it’s a good business,” Sook said during Nexstar’s first-quarter earnings call Thursday. “It’s not a business we want to get into to lose money.”

Noting Wednesday’s news that The Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery were putting Disney Plus, Hulu and Max in a new package for consumers, Sook observed that the industry is rebundling its assets.

“We’ve gone around the world to go around the corner and what we’re doing is repeating basic cable,” he said.

In some ways, basic cable was better than streaming is today, he said.

“One thing basic cable has that an amalgamation of apps doesn’t have is seamless navigation,” Sook said. “For viewers of a certain age, being able to change channels is something we grew up doing and something we still like to do.”

Also Read: Nexstar Pitches Sports on The CW, Extra Reach Via Stations

“You probably don't have the number of content choices that you do in a traditional bundle,” he added.

In the three and a half years since most media companies started launching direct-to-consumer offerings, those products have resulted in billions of dollars in losses and market-cap destruction, Sook said.

On top of that, those companies disrupted their own linear businesses. Sook called that a “lose-lose proposition.”

Looking ahead, Sook said the industry is developing better business models.

Those models “are being developed with broadcast as the anchor as it always has been, given viewer demand for our must-have local and national programming including sports and special-event programming that relies on our unrivaled reach to maximize audiences,” Sook said.

“We think there are any number of ways that we can reach the consumer. Everyone wants to stream because they don't have broadcast assets that are free over-the-air that can reach 100% of the population,” he said. “They are trying to expand outside of that traditional pay TV universe, but we've been there for time immemorial.”

Speaking of broadcast assets, an analyst asked if Nexstar would be interested in buying CBS’s stations if Paramount is acquired and opts to break up the company. Last year, Nexstar was reportedly interested in ABC and its stations when The Walt Disney Co. was considering putting them on the block.

Sook said Nexstar never confirmed discussing Disney assets, and that in the current regulatory environment, it would be difficult for Nexstar (which has ownership-cap issues) to digest the CBS stations. “If that were to change, maybe, you know, our opinion would change.”

Andrea Robinson starts on the weekend newscasts at WCMH Columbus, Ohio, Saturday, May 11, anchoring alongside Matthew Herchik and meteorologist Bryan Still. NBC4 Today airs Saturdays 5-7 a.m. and Sundays 5-8. 

Robinson will also report on the morning news Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. She debuted at the station May 8, co-anchoring with Herchik on NBC4 Midday. 

Nexstar Media Group owns WCMH. 

Robinson previously worked at KPLC Lake Charles (Louisiana), which is owned by Gray Television. 

She grew up in central Ohio and graduated from Ohio University. 

“I’m so excited to be back in Columbus,” she said on the air May 8. “It’s really cool to be home.”

TVSpy previously reported Robinson joining the Nexstar station.  

Columbus is the No. 32 Nielsen DMA. 

Nexstar Media Group reported higher first-quarter earnings and said that it cut losses at The CW by $50 million year-over-year.

Net income rose to $175 million, or $5.16 per share, from $111 million, or $2.97 a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 2% to $1.3 billion.

Distribution revenue increased 4.5% to $761 million. Advertising revenue was down 1% to $512 million.

“Nexstar is off to a strong start in 2024, delivering the highest first-quarter net revenues in the company’s history and once again outpacing consensus expectations for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow,” Nexstar chairman and CEO Perry Sook said.

“As the industry’s largest local broadcaster with the most-watched broadcast television programming, Nexstar’s value to our distribution and advertising partners is demonstrated by our continued strong financial performance, including all-time quarterly high distribution revenue,” Sook said. “We continue to make progress at The CW, reducing operating losses by $50 million year-over-year and kicking off the 2023/2024 broadcast season by delivering two sequential quarters of primetime audience improvement.

“Looking ahead, we remain confident that Nexstar will deliver another strong year of financial results and expect to build momentum through 2024, given the anticipated record-level of political spending this presidential election cycle,” Sook said.

If upfront advertisers are looking for reach, Nexstar Media Group believes its base of local stations gives it a unique way to achieve that goal.

Michael Strober, chief revenue officer at Nexstar, told Broadcasting+Cable that even advertisers interested in the sports programming that Nexstar has added to The CW Network, can benefit from a national-local approach.

“If you care about college football, we have ACC football and you can buy that on The CW,” Strober said.  “Then you can extend that reach across all of the Nexstar affiliates on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, who all carry college football every week,” he said.

So while some debate the merits of linear versus streaming, Nexstar is offering a better way for advertisers to get closer to their customers.

“You can still be involved in the same content and you can get it on linear television. We can light up certain geographic areas if you have a big store opening or you want to do something out of an auto dealership,” he said.

Nexstar calls its national plus local approach total audience. That calls for a different measurement system, and Strober says Nexstar is recommending Comscore as the single source for measuring both local and national.

Comscore uses the same methodology for its local measurement as for its nation ratings, which means you can add up local viewers and national viewers.

Sports are among the most popular properties with advertisers, and Nexstar’s addition of LIV golf, ACC football and basketball, WWE NXT wrestling and NASCAR racing are bringing new advertisers to The CW.

Strober notes that The CW will have over 500 hours of sports programming by 2025, up from zero before Nexstar bought the network.

That’s helped add more than 25 new advertisers to the CW across 2023 and the first quarter of 2024.

Nexstar is also building a data-driven video product and is looking to do more live, in-market activations. It is working with EDO and Innovid to show how effective advertising on Nexstar is.

The best practices Nexstar develops for its national business will be available in local markets, Strober said.

Nexstar’s upfront slogan is “We got Next,” a play not only on the parent company’s name, but a reference to the up and comers who appear on the network, from the Xfinity drivers who will become tomorrow NASCAR stars, the NXT wrestlers who will graduate to the main event and the college athletes bound for the NFL and the NBA.

Nexstar has also remade The CW primetime lineup, broadening its audience from the target audience of young adults the CW’s superhero programming was designed for.

Also Read: The CW President Dennis Miller Talks Up Net’s Reboot and What’s Coming Next

Also in the Nexstar portfolio of up-and-comers is NewsNation, the cable channel, and The Hill, the online politics site.

Strober noted that NewsNation got the last Republican primary debate. It was simulcast on NewsNation and The CW and drew 4 million viewers, raising the network’s profile. It recently appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch and in the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

“Our tagline is News for All America,” he said. “We also refer to our viewers as the moderate majority.”

Strober said NewsNation is in the market with election packages for advertisers who want to sponsor debates, election night and other political coverage on a network that’s not polarizing.

How will the market develop? Strober says it’s still pretty early, but some things appear clear.

“The linear market will be down because the supply is getting smaller,” he said. “We know that sports is something that people are going to want to continue to support and invest in, and luckily we have that.”

For Nexstar, “It’s really about bringing more and more new advertisers to the networks. It doesn’t take a lot to move the needle and I think we’re being very responsible in asking advertisers to get on board with us,” he said. “I think we have a compelling story. We are adding new capabilities and we have a growth story. We’re bringing them the things they want.”

The owner of Detroit station WADL is urging Mission Broadcasting to close its $75 million acquisition of WADL before a June 30 deadline.

In an earlier interview, Adell Broadcasting CEO Kevin Adell suggested that a local marketing agreement would enable Mission to operate WADL while appealing conditions put on the sale by the Federal Communications Commission. 

But Adell now says an LMA is of the table.

The FCC approved the agreement to transfer WADL’s license to Mission, but attached significant conditions to the approval.

Most of those conditions appear designed to limit the control over the station by Nexstar Media Group, which is involved in the financing of the deal and would program and operate the station under management agreements with Mission. WADL also would have become an affiliate of The CW Network, which is controlled by Nexstar.

The conditions were imposed after the FCC ordered Mission to sell WPIX New York, because the regulator decided Nexstar had “de facto” control over WPIX and that control put it over the national ownership cap.

The conditions also make the WADL deal less attractive to Mission, which described the conditions as "problematic," and Nexstar.

On Monday Kevin Adell, CEO of Adell Broadcasting, which built WADL said he sent a letter to Dennis Thatcher, president of Mission. (Thatcher did not reply when asked to comment.)

In the letter, Adell said he will not participate in an appeal of the conditions of the sale.

“I will make sure there is no reference in the appeal that this is a joint appeal,” Adell said. “I am not sure how this order and opinion will affect your other Mission stations or the industry as a whole.”

It’s possible that if the WADL sale goes through with the conditions added by the FCC, that other stations owned by Mission and run by Nexstar under management agreements, would come under scrutiny.

Other broadcasters run similar “sidecar” stations in markets.

“I suggest that you close on the WADL acquisition with the FCC conditions placed on the license transfer before June 30, 2024, or seek alternative stations in the Detroit to fulfil you plans,” Adell said, referring to the fact The CW will be losing its current Detroit affiliate on August 31 and Nexstar was counting on WADL being the new affiliate.

“After June 30, 2024, I will be exploring all of my options,” Adell said.

Nexstar Media Group, which owns The CW, said the network’s affiliation will be moving to Nexstar-owned WGN Chicago.

Nexstar had previously said that two other Nexstar owned stations — WVBT Norfolk, Virginia, and KLFY Lafayette, Louisiana — will also carry CW programming starting Sept. 1. 

WVBT is a Fox affiliate. The CW will be on digital channel 43.2, replacing Cozi TV. KLFY is a CBS affiliate and The CW will be on channel 10.2.

“The addition of these Nexstar-owned stations as affiliates — two of which are among the country’s Top 50 largest markets, highlighted by Chicago at No. 3 — will bring the number of Nexstar-owned CW stations to 42, covering more than 36% of U.S. TV households,” Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said. “Adding The CW’s programming to them will offer advertisers a variety of new linear and digital opportunities to reach millions of viewers.” 

Nexstar is able to generate additional revenue and profits in markets where it owns The CW affiliates. Since acquiring a majority stake in the network, Nexstar has changed its programming strategy and added sports programming in weekend time slots.

The CW affiliate in Chicago had been WCIU, owned by Weigel Broadcasting.

“It’s good for us and good for the network,“ Weigel vice chairman Neal Sabin said. “We wish them well.”

The CW affiliations will be shuffling in other markets as well. Affiliation agreements with stations owned by the E.W. Scripps Co. are not being renewed in seven markets including Norfolk and Lafayette.

The other markets where Scripps’s CW affiliations are ending are Detroit; Miami; Tucson, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; and San Luis Obispo, California.

Mission Broadcasting, which works closely with Nexstar, agreed to buy WADL in Detroit and was expected to make that station a The CW affiliate. But the Federal Communications Commission put conditions on the sale and it is not clear if the transaction will be completed. 

Ken Wayne, evening anchor at KRON San Francisco, is retiring after 33 years in Bay Area television. He was born in Marin County, started his journalism career as a Navy broadcast journalist for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network, and joined the station in 2018.

Wayne’s final day is May 26.  

“Ken has been a constant, reliable force of reassurance on the anchor desk. With his connection to the military community, he’s been a great steward of service to the Bay Area and our veterans,” KRON VP and general manager Jim Rose said. 

Wayne has covered the Loma Prieta earthquake, the O.J. Simpson trial, the 2000 presidential election challenge in Florida, and Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female speaker of the house, among other local stories of national interest. 

“In all these stories, I tried to convey a sense of meaning and relevance to viewers. Why it matters. Why it matters to them,” Wayne said.

Wayne has worked in Palm Springs, Chico, Fresno, Sacramento and Los Angeles in addition to the Bay Area. He spent 26 years at KTVU before landing at KRON. 

Nexstar Media Group owns KRON. 

“There's a lot to share about Ken, from his numerous awards to the years of service to our community, but I think what stands out most is his passion for our newscasts,” news director Josh Palefsky said. “You'd be hard-pressed to find another local journalist more dedicated to serving the Bay Area. It was common to find Ken at KRON before his shift started, often pitching a great story he was working on.”

In retirement, Wayne is looking forward to dedicating time to animal rescues. 

“Thirty-three years is a pretty long time to stay in one business,” Wayne said. “Every day there are different challenges. I’m grateful for the many people who’ve helped me along the way and especially appreciative of the feedback from viewers. You kept me focused, honest, and humble. Thank you. It’s been a rewarding career. Now, it’s time for new challenges.”

Conditions put on the proposed sale of WADL Detroit, to Mission Broadcasting have created a potential drama in the Motor City.

Kevin Adell, CEO of Adell Broadcasting, owner of WADL, told Broadcasting+Cable he expects the $75 million deal to go through, but said that Mission called the conditions “problematic.” 

Mission’s bid is being financed by Nexstar Media Group, which wants WADL to become the market’s CW affiliate after September 1, when the CW’s deal with WMYD, owned by E.W. Scripps Co., expires. Scripps and Nexstar have said the affiliation deal won’t be renewed.

But a similar deal, in which Mission bought WPIX New York and had Nexstar run the station under a series of management and marketing agreements, led to the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau fining both companies and requiring Mission to sell WPIX because Nexstar’s “de facto” control of the station put it over the agency’s ownership limit. 

Nexstar has challenged the FCC’s decision. 

To prevent a similar situation in Detroit, the FCC approved the sale of WADL but barred Nexstar from being involved in financing the deal and limited the amount of programming Nexstar can provide to WADL, how much of WADL’s ad revenue Nexstar can keep, how much Mission can pay Nexstar for providing services and prevented Nexstar from getting an option to buy the station in the future.

The conditional approval was reported earlier by The Desk.

Brendan Carr, the senior Republican FCC commissioner, issued a statement on the “FCC’s denial of WADL-TV’s application.” 

Carr said that the FCC’s Media Bureau “styles its decision as a ‘conditional approval,’ but it is no such thing.”  

The decision “requires these private parties to abandon the deal that they had negotiated and decide whether to accept an entirely different deal on entirely different terms,” he said.

Carr said the decision exceeds the agency’s statutory authority, saying the law requires the FCC to either grant the application or designate it for a hearing.

“Here, the FCC chooses neither of the two options Congress authorized,“ Carr said. “It is not approving the application on terms agreed upon by the parties. Nor is it designating the application for hearing. It is instead taking the application the FCC received and substituting it for a new one drafted by the agency. That’s not the FCC’s job or role.” 

Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting declined to comment on whether they would close the acquisition under the conditions imposed by the FCC.

Adell said that his lawyers contacted Mission on Tuesday, after the ruling, telling Mission it had two choices: Either to pay the $75 million and close the deal within the five days called for in the sale agreement while contesting the conditions imposed by the FCC, or to set up a local marketing agreement that would allow Mission to run the station while the ruling is challenged. Mission would have to give Adell 80% of the purchase price or $60 million immediately if it goes the LMA route, and pay the remainder over eight years.

Failure to close the deal would result in lawsuits, Adell said. Plus, Nexstar needs a CW affiliate in a big market like Detroit. “It’s either me or off the air,” he said.

Despite the conditions, “I’m glad the commission approved [the application],” Adell said. “They could have sat on it or they could have sent it to an administrative law judge, and that would have essentially killed this deal.”

The conditions imposed by the FCC take effect after the sale. “That’s their problem, not my problem, Adell said.

Adell said he didn’t think a sizable broadcaster like Mission would have trouble getting a loan to buy WADL.

The other conditions can be worked around, Adell said, unlike something more severe, like being forced to sell stations to acquire WADL.

Met With FCC Chair

To get the deal approved, Adell said, he met with FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel five times. He invited Mission to join him in those meetings, but Mission passed. “If they had problems with the conditions, they had ample time to negotiate,” he said.

Adell has been a broadcaster since he was a teenage ham radio operator. He built WADL right out of college after getting a construction permit from the FCC.

He said Rosenworcel admired his status as a longtime broadcaster and assured him the deal would go through. “She told me [the delay in approving the application] has nothing to do with me,“ he said. ”The company that’s buying you is under investigation. I can’t talk about it.”

Carr, who had criticized aspects of last month's Nexstar-Mission decision, noted that the long review and conditions imposed were a problem for the broadcast industry.

“As I have said recently, we are at a break-glass moment for America’s broadcasters,“ Carr said. ”They are facing unprecedented headwinds and competition, including from their largely unregulated Big Tech competitors. The FCC should be focused on decisions that will make it easier for broadcasters to attract the capital necessary for them to invest, compete and serve their local communities. Once again, the FCC does the opposite today.”

Edward Moody is joining the WBTW Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, anchor crew, and will anchor the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts alongside Trish Williford. He comes from WSAV Savannah, Georgia, where he anchored the 4 p.m. news for over four years. 

WBTW and WSAV are both part of Nexstar Media Group. WBTW is known as News 13. 

Moody succeeds Patsy Kelly at the News 13 anchor desk. Kelly departs May 3. 

Williford joined the WBTW team in March, following the retirement of Bob Juback. 

“WBTW is lucky to find a journalist who has the experience that Edward has,” news director Paul Caron said. “He and Trish Williford will make a great team.”

Before WSAV, Moody worked at WCCO Minneapolis and WXIN Indianapolis, among other stations. 

“Nowadays it’s rare to be able to hire a journalist with Edward’s rich background and skills,” added Robert Raff, WBTW VP and general manager. “We’re anxiously awaiting his arrival.”

WBTW is the CBS affiliate in Myrtle Beach/Florence, which is Nielsen’s No. 100 market. 

Nexstar Media Group is asking the Federal Communications Commission to cancel its order that WPIX New York be divested by Mission Broadcasting, claiming that the agreements under which Nexstar runs the station for Mission are legal and approved by the commission.

Nexstar also wants a $1.2 million fine levied against it by the FCC canceled. Mission was also fined $612,395 as part of the commission’s Notice of Apparent Liability.

“Through the NAL, the Commission seeks to wield its enforcement authority in a myriad of improper ways,” Nexstar said in its response.

Nexstar said the FCC ignored its prior approval of WPIX’s arrangements with the station group, deviated from previous commission rulings and misapplied certain financial regulations.

Mission said it also filed a response to the FCC's action. The response was not made public.

In March, after complaints from Comcast and others, the FCC ruled that Nexstar had taken de facto control of WPIX in violation of the agency’s rules. It said that Nexstar both ran the station and received the economic gains from its operation.

Control of WPIX puts Nexstar over the limit for how much of the country its stations can reach. As a result, The FCC gave Mission 12 months to either sell the station to an independent party or to Nexstar. If it sells to Nexstar, the company must divest some of its other stations to get under the cap.

Nexstar acquired WPIX when it bought Tribune Broadcasting in 2020 and sold an option to buy the station to the E.W. Scripps Co. Mission later acquired the option and bought WPIX. Mission and Nexstar reached agreements enabling Nexstar to run and program the stations and sell its ad inventory.

In its response, Nexstar said the commission “argues that Nexstar violated the Communications Act by performing the express terms of agreements that the FCC previously reviewed and approved. It seeks to rewrite FCC rules without a notice-and-comment rulemaking proceeding.”

Nexstar charges the FCC with creating new regulatory requirements without prior notice or due process and applying “vague” standards. 

“After reaching these flawed legal conclusions, the Commission then decides, without any forewarning, that it has the authority to propose divestitures as part of an NAL, in addition to proposing an unprecedented forfeiture for a purported violation of the national ownership cap,” Nexstar said.

"The NAL is not only unfair in its treatment of Nexstar, Mission, and the community that WPIX serves (of whose interests the Commission takes no consideration), but also is unjust to the broadcast industry and the FCC-regulated community at large,” Nexstar added. 

“What the Commission tells its regulatees in the NAL is that they may take no comfort in their settled expectations based on approval, precedent and compliance with the rules, because the Commission may revoke such approval, ignore its precedent or change its rules without warning,” Nexstar said. 

Nexstar Media Group said it does not intend to renew the affiliations of The CW stations owned by the E.W. Scripps Co. in seven markets.

In two of those markets — Norfolk, Virginia, and Lafayette, Louisiana — Nexstar-owned stations will become the new The CW affiliates, effective Sept. 1.

“We have interest from other station groups in the five remaining markets and expect to make announcements about those affiliations soon,” Nexstar said in a statement. “We are prepared for this transition and confident that The CW will continue to reach 100% of US television households without interruption.”  

The other five markets are Detroit; Miami; Tucson, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas[ and San Luis Obispo, California.

“This is an opportunity for us to bring Scripps’ excellent local and national programming — entertainment from our networks, news from local stations and Scripps News and, in some markets, local sports rights — to even more audiences across the country,” Scripps said in a statement. “We are still in the process of determining exactly what the new programming will look like in each affected market.”

Dennis Miller took over as president of The CW in October 2022, after the network was acquired by Nexstar Media Group. He quickly set about refashioning The CW by bringing in more live sports, decreasing the number of scripted series that are exclusive to the network and deploying a coproduction model that sees series air on The CW and another network in a different country. Those include Wild Cards, about a cop and a con woman working together, and Sullivan’s Crossing, about a woman who leaves the big city to live on the campground run by her estranged father. Both also air in Canada. 

Miller spoke with Broadcasting+Cable about his eventful first 18 months atop The CW, including the network’s shift away from the younger demo it once targeted, and what is next. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation.

B+C: The CW has bet big on sports — LIV Golf, ACC football and basketball, NASCAR. What’s next in terms of sports?

Dennis Miller: I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities on the edge. A variety of folks are acquiring and/or licensing sports assets right now, and some probably have more than they can really handle. I think a lot of the leagues and the IP holders — the schools, the athletes themselves — are saying, ‘Hey, I want broad reach.’ So notwithstanding that the deep-pocketed streamers in many cases can write pretty sizable checks to acquire things, I think a lot of the IP holders want to be seen in 100% of the country because they’re reaching out to attract alumni, to grow their endowments, grow their sports programs. I think a lot of the traditional incumbents are going to create opportunities where we can insert ourselves. 

We've got a pretty full slate. We’ve got 500 hours [of sports content annually] as of 2025. And the only place we’d really like to find something would be Sunday afternoons, because that is relatively open for us right now, other than some golf tournaments. 

B+C: How is LIV Golf doing this season?

DM: It’s up about 25%. I think the addition of John Rahm was very helpful. They have a number of players who are in The Masters coming up [April 11-14]. And as soon as you get near The Masters, you have this gravitational pull and everyone gets focused: Now that [NCAA] basketball’s over, it’s gonna be all Masters all the time. 

LIV has been doing more promotion with the golfers. When we have U.S.-based events, we obviously do much better because time zone-wise, they comport with how people like to watch golf. 

LIV opened up all sports for us. As soon as we announced that deal, the phone started ringing — ‘Oh, I see you guys are doing sports.’ That begat the ACC conversation and the Inside the NFL conversation and all the other stuff that we've added.

B+C: How did Inside the NFL do in its first season?

DM: In the beginning, it was probably a little softer than we had hoped. Since it skews fairly male in a broadcast schedule that was fairly balanced, it took a little while to find its way. We don't have a flywheel like the other networks do, where they can promote from their sporting events on Saturday and Sunday into Tuesday. So in the beginning it was trying to find its sea legs. 

They were also testing out different people to host, seeing how Ryan [Clark] was going to do. Now we’re in a place where we know how to reach out to the audience, how to find the audience. We ended up making a deal with two other parties — the NFL Network, where it runs at midnight after us, and on Netflix. So we’ve had three outlets to start creating some awareness amongst the various parties as to where to find it. 

I’d say the first year was a little softer than we had originally hoped, but now that we’ve got a lot more sports to surround it with, especially on weekends, we're pretty hopeful going into the new season.

B+C: Is Ryan Clark coming back as the host?

DM: Absolutely. His credibility as an analyst allows us to get a lot of other people to participate in the show and do cameos and all the extracurricular stuff. He’s kind of got the Good Housekeeping seal in the NFL broadcasting world.

B+C: During the TCA Winter Press Tour, president of entertainment Brad Schwartz stressed that the Canadian scripted shows on The CW aren’t ‘imported,’ they’re typically coproductions. Will that be a big part of the primetime model going forward? 

DM: I think Canada will be one part of the model. Brad’s done a lot of work there and reminds me frequently that he’s Canadian and loves hockey. Obviously, the tax advantages, the lack of accents, the easy ability to move back and forth, between crews and getting talent up to Vancouver and Toronto, makes it very attractive. 

What you're seeing now in places like Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Bulgaria, big tax advantages, great scenery and high-quality crews. Previously, you weren’t able to pull enough money out of the international market to make some of these coproductions viable, but I think that’s changed dramatically. So there’s a situation where we can be the domestic home for broadcast for a couple of runs. We don't have any streaming business, and who knew that would be a wonderful place to be in today's world? So we can partner with someone who has international capabilities, who may or may not have a streaming capability here, and be a piece of that puzzle.

 B+C: What among the coproductions is working out well?

DM: We’re very happy with Wild Cards [coproduced with CBC Television]. It was just kind of the right show. We were moving away from some of the young-adult stuff because broadcast skews older and young adults typically are bingeing when they want to watch something, as opposed to waiting until Wednesday at 8 p.m. to find their show. So as they moved out of broadcast, it was like, what kind of shows are going to work for audiences that will be good lead-ins to the 10 o’clock news on our affiliates? Wild Cards was the first show where we said, ‘OK, we’ve got an attractive cast, we’ve got a fun, light-hearted show that people can tune into without having to know all the backstory.’ 

We got lucky, because It's a little bit of magic in this business. There was great chemistry between the two leads [Vanessa Morgan and Giacomo Gianniotti].

B+C: How many seasons do you see All American going?

DM: It’s kicked off to a really nice start. [Season six began April 1.] We’re going to watch this one closely. That’s up to Warner and ourselves and the cast. It’s had a really nice run. We've got a very interesting storyline that runs through this season.

I would imagine, after five or six airings and we see how it does, both on broadcast and digital, we will come to a determination. 

B+C: Brad at TCA had mentioned The CW taking on the blue-sky motif in scripted that other networks like USA Network had abandoned. Is that an accurate description of the network’s scripted shows?

DM: Very. Jeff Wachtel is doing one of the shows for us, and he ran USA, and Heather Olander, who works with us [head of unscripted programming], was at USA, too. 

That kind of comfort food that’s breezy and positive and easy to pop into and out of — if you look at how viewers are coming to broadcast now and what’s working out there, the more complicated plot lines, the darker stuff, is obviously the domain of streamers, and there’s some amazing content out there. We often have people who've made shows for streamers or even the streamers themselves talking to us, saying, would we be interested in a second run here? Some of this stuff for sure. But a lot of it just wouldn’t work in broadcast, which demands too much of an audience to show up at a particular point in time and pull into a show where they understand what’s going on with the characters. 

The more we’re doing this, and it’s early days, we're seeing that the kind of entertainment that people can easily find, relate to, enjoy the actors and actresses and not have to be so deeply engaged that they can lean back — broadcast seems to work very well. 

B+C: Sherlock Holmes is a character that we’ve read and seen for decades. What stands out about the CW project Sherlock & Daughter?

DM: One, we’ve got some terrific casting that we were able to secure at the very last minute. We like the production team that's involved and we wanted to take a more whimsical approach here. And in a world with so much noise, you better find some IP that people at least say, ‘Oh, OK at least I have a general idea that I'll be with this colorful sleuth trying to uncover a mystery here.’ We've wanted to stick with things that were premarketed.

B+C: How’s Brad Schwartz working out? 

DM: I couldn’t be happier. He’s so passionate about whatever asset that he’s working with. I had the good fortune of working with him at what was TV Guide [Network] and then turned into Pop TV. I knew who I was getting into business with. I wanted someone who was well-liked in the creative community, who had a lot of marketing chops. I knew we needed to be scrappy, that we would have limited marketing budgets, that we had to rebrand The CW because it was really a beloved brand amongst its constituents there, but the world had changed. So how do you go through a rebranding exercise? 

Brad checked all those boxes and was a known commodity. We’re a good yin and yang.

B+C: You got Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble game shows in the works. Why are those right for The CW?

DM: Once again, preexisting IP. In a noisy, fragmented television landscape, you need things where audiences already know what they're going to walk into. Those were obviously two well-known games from Hasbro and Mattel. We were able to make a deal with eOne right while it was selling to Lionsgate there. And we’re very close with the Lionsgate folks — I used to work there and we trust them completely in their ability to produce good shows. So it was really quality IP that was already well-known to consumers. 

B+C: Are you looking for more game shows?

DM: We'll see how these do. There’s not a lot of well-known titles that are still available, but we snoop around over in Europe and elsewhere.

B+C: How do you describe The CW brand in 2024?

DM: Obviously we’re broadcast-centric, which isn’t really a brand definition, but because of the ownership — Nexstar has 30-plus CW affiliates, so we wanted to make sure that the value of those continues to grow and not just [have them] be a set of rerun broadcasters. 

Blue sky and friendly and comforting are all words that we want to be able to provide the consumer. We want to be sports-centric. Sports and news drives a lot of what’s working in broadcast. 

As this thing unfolds and we see how audiences respond, we’ll put the fuel on the stuff that works and we’ll fail fast on things that don’t. 

Underdog’s probably a good word because The CW was always one of the smaller broadcast networks compared to the Big Four. And if you look at the sports that we've picked up, whether it's LIV taking on the PGA or NXT leading into WWE or Xfinity [NASCAR] leading into the Cup, you're seeing a trend of the next generation of sports talent here. We're not playing for the NFL. I think underdog’s a really good definition of who we are. 

B+C: Nexstar owns NewsNation. Will there be more NewsNation content on The CW?

DM: I think so. With Crime Nation, we were able to tap into their broadcasters. Dan Abrams was all over the Curb Your Enthusiasm finale, which was very interesting. They’ve got this great newsgathering capability. You’ve got talent like [Elizabeth] Vargas and [Chris] Cuomo and Abrams that people already know and have done lots of different kinds of docs and specials here. 

In the beginning we wanted to get The CW turned around, get the right people in place. But I think you’ll see a lot of smart collaborations, and us doing more and more where it works.

B+C: What do you hear from [Nexstar chairman/CEO] Perry Sook about The CW?

DM: A lot. I think it’s one of the three or four initiatives in the company that he is highly focused on. I remember as a board member, when we were discussing acquiring The CW, and I came to understand what the previous regime was delivering for affiliates, because it really was not broadcast-centric at the time. So I had a front-row seat to what the strategic decision was to get involved with The CW. From Perry's vantage point it was, ‘Hey, I want to play offense and defense here. I want to make sure that we have the kind of product that broadcasters want first and foremost.’ And so sports became a very important part. 

He’s very involved. He watches the programming. He was just out for a couple days for strategy meetings about where we go from here, what's working, what's not working, are there other sports that we can add? He constantly uses as a refrain Moneyball to say, how do we identify IP, sports and otherwise, and that we do the deals on a financially sound basis? We have the backdrop of the RSNs not doing it on a financially sound basis. And when they imploded, that created opportunity for us to be talking to a lot of the teams and leagues.

He didn’t start with one station and get to be the biggest broadcaster without paying attention to the details. So I hear from Perry a lot. It’s a treat to be working with a founder. There's not a lot of founder-driven companies left in the business today. 

B+C: What’s your take on broadcasting in general? 

DM: When I went into the venture capital business and left the television business, because I'd been in cable with Turner and I'd been overseeing Sony’s TV business for a number of years, I would not have said, 20 years ago, ‘Oh my God, local broadcast will be fine.’ But as I learned, first being on the Nexstar board, and saw how that business was run and the unique place that local fits into the American psyche, I was like, ‘OK, this isn't really going anywhere.’ 

It may have been a 50% margin business and it’s now a 35% margin business. But I can't believe how resilient this has been. People want to see the people and events and things that happen around them. They care about their local sports, they care about their favorite teams, they care about what’s happening in the news around them.

Nobody knew that you could deliver news product at this level and still find significant audiences, and you can do it at three or four stations in a market and still have very significant audiences. 

With Perry leading the charge on retrans, the second revenue stream that really propped up broadcasting in a significant way, the MVPDs have seen the power of having local in their mix of offerings and not just being a kind of single-purpose product. 

I was very surprised when I got to The CW and started talking to the station groups, ours and Tegna, Sinclair, Scripps and others, trying to understand what they were looking for. I was like, huh, not getting an SVOD proved to be a very good strategy of staying out of that huge money suck that has been that business.

The business still has really good margins. The company has low leverage, really good cash flow and then add political to it — this really messed up political climate that we’re in that’s so polarized creates huge dollars. Those factors mean that we’re not going anywhere. That 100% reach is going to be a big advantage and that focus on local matters to consumers.  

The Federal Communications Commission has ordered Mission Broadcasting to sell WPIX New York and fined Nexstar Media Group more than $1.2 million because Nexstar has taken de facto control of the station in violation of agency rules.

The agency also ordered Mission to pay a forfeiture of $612,395 for rules violations, the maximum allowed.

“We find that Mission and Nexstar have committed apparent willful and repeated violations,” the FCC said. 

Nexstar said it intends to dispute the ruling “vigorously.” Mission called the decision "unwarranted" and said it would also contest the ruling.

Nexstar, which has a financial interest in Mission, operates WPIX under a series of management agreements. The FCC said that because Nexstar programs the stations and collects its advertising and distribution revenue, it controls the station without approval. The arrangement also puts Nexstar over the 39% station ownership cap, which is why Nexstar opted to divest WPIX and WGN Chicago after buying Tribune Media in 2019.

Also Read: Judge Dismisses DirecTV Antitrust Suit Against Nexstar, Mission, White Knight

Mission has 12 months to either sell the station to an independent party or to Nexstar. If it sells to Nexstar, Nexstar must divest stations to get under the ownership cap, the FCC said.

“We are extremely disappointed in today’s action by the Federal Communication Commission regarding our relationship with WPIX-TV and we intend to dispute it vigorously,” said Nexstar CEO Perry Sook.

“We believe the FCC has been misled by the often distracting noise in the media ecosphere and that it has completely misjudged the facts,” Sook said.

Sook said Nexstar has complied with FCC regulations since Mission acquired WPIX in 2020. Nexstar divested WPIX after acquiring its parent company Tribune Broadcasting. Nexstar sold an option to buy the station to E.W. Scripps Co., and Mission later acquired the option.  

Mission is the licensee for 29 full-power TV stations in 26 markets, and all of the stations are operated by or in conjunction with Nexstar through various agreements. New York is the only market where Mission operates and Nexstar doesn't, the FCC said, and therefore can't claim to gain benefits from sharing some service functions.

“Nexstar believes that joint operating, shared service, and local marketing agreements like those in which it is engaged are vitally important to maintain a competitive media marketplace and to enable broadcasters to continue investing in local news, investigative journalism, and other services that they uniquely provide to the communities in which they are located,” Sook said.

Dennis Thatcher, president of Mission Broadcasting, released a statement saying that the company has a near 28-year track record of owning TV stations with an unblemished record.

"We have prided ourselves on conducting our business in an open and transparent manner with the Federal Communications Commission and other governmental agencies. Mission was granted the license for WPIX-TV by a full vote of the F.C.C. in December 2020," Thatcher said. "We believe that this attempt at 'revisionist history' by this F.C.C. is unwarranted and we plan to contest this ruling to the full extent the law allows.”

Comcast urged the FCC to looking into Nexstar violating the ownership cap in 2021.

“After a thorough examination, the FCC found that Nexstar is in clear violation of FCC rules and orders, and controls WPIX," Comcast said Thursday. "We’d like to thank the Commission for correctly attributing the ownership of WPIX to Nexstar and ending the fiction that the station was ever independent once Mission became its licensee."

The FCC determined that "the Parties’ actions before, during, and after Mission’s acquisition of WPIX (the Acquisition) apparently resulted in Nexstar taking de facto control of WPIX, resulting in Nexstar and Mission violating section 310(d) of the Act through an unauthorized transfer of control. In addition, Nexstar apparently violated the ownership restrictions in section 73.3555(e) of the Rules by obtaining undisclosed cognizable attributable interests in WPIX without Commission authorization."

Commissioner Brendan Carr, in a concurring statement, noted that the FCC apparently uncovered information about Nexstar and Mission that wasn't known when the agency approved of Mission's buying WPIX. “Those FCC allegations will require careful review,” Carr said. “But it is concerning to me that the FCC cites as evidence of control those features of the relationship that the FCC previously signed off on. We need to be careful that we do not undermine reasonable reliance on prior FCC decisions.”

A Federal judge dismissed DirecTV’s antitrust lawsuit accusing Nexstar Media Group, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting of conspiring to boost retransmission consent fees.

Senior Judge Kevin Castel of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said in his decision that DirecTV did not have standing under antitrust law because it did not enter into an agreement with Mission or White Knight which would have required it to pay “supercompetitive” fees.

“This ruling sets a dangerous precedent that a victim of price-fixing needs to pay the inflated price before it can make a claim in court," a DirecTV spokesman said.

Nexstar operates stations for Mission and White Knight. In 2022 DirecTV decided not to renew its retrans agreements with Mission and White Night, which resulted in nearly 1 million DirecTV subscribers being blacked out from receiving the stations’ signals via satellite, according to the judge’s decision.

While DirecTV's allegations that the defendant engaged in a price fixing conspiracy were supported and it was able to identify a an actual injury in loss of profits resulting from the blackouts, according to the decision, it is also required to be able to show that the injury was the type of injury antitrust laws were intended to prevent.

“Here, Plaintiff’s injury—lost profits resulting from the blackouts—does not flow from that which makes Defendants’ acts unlawful because DirecTV does not allege that it paid anticompetitive rates but instead made the unilateral decision to abandon [retrans] negotiations,'' the judge wrote in his decision. “Its losses therefore flow from its own choice to exit the market.”

He added that DirecTV is not a competitor with the defendant, but instead a buyer, which makes a difference under antitrust laws.

“Because ‘DirecTV has refused Defendants’ supracompetitive, price-fixed demands,’ it cannot show that its lost profits flow from that which makes defendants’ price-fixing illegal. As such, it has failed to show that it suffered “a special kind of antitrust injury,” according to the opinion.

The judge also declined to exercise jurisdiction over DirecTV’s claims under state laws.

Gray Television, which will air a package of five Cleveland Cavalier basketball games on two Ohio stations this season, said it made deals with Nexstar Media Group, Cox Media Group and Tegna to put the games on additional stations in Ohio.

The move is the latest in a series following an agreement between the National Basketball Association and Diamond Sports Group, the bankrupt owner of the Bally regional sports networks, to increase reach by shifting telecasts to broadcast from cable.

NBA teams have made similar arrangements in markets including Milwaukee, Dallas, New Orleans and Los Angeles.

Gray’s WUAB Cleveland and WXIX Cincinnati will air the five games starting March 8 when the Cavs take on the Minnesota Timberwolves.

In Columbus, Tegna will air two games on the WBNS primary channel and another game on digital channel 10.2, which usually carries MeTV programming.

In Dayton, Nexstar’s WBDT will air three games, while CMG’s WHIO will air a pair of contests on digital channel 7.2.

In the Wheeling, West Virginia-Steubenville, Ohio, market, Nexstar’s WTRF will air all five games on digital channel 7.2.

In Youngstown, Nexstar’s WYTV will air all five games on digital channel 32.2.

The five games will not appear on Bally Sports Ohio. 

“We are excited to share that in addition to airing these five games on Gray’s WUAB in Cleveland and WXIX in Cincinnati, Gray has partnered with local television broadcasters to expand the coverage of Cavaliers basketball throughout the region,” said Matt Moran, senior managing VP for Gray Television. 

“These agreements will offer an exceptional viewing experience with unparalleled reach. This is a significant victory for the Cavaliers and sports fans throughout the region,” Moran said.

Broadcast stations are looking to keep more of their distribution revenue by changing the way they pay networks for programming — especially sports — to a variable payment model from a fixed reverse-compensation fee.

Cord-cutting has slowed the growth of station retransmission-consent payments, which are calculated on a per-subscriber basis. If pay TV churn accelerates, retrans payments could shrink while networks continue to get their fixed fees from stations. That would pressure profit margins for the affiliates.

Station groups want the networks to share the risk.

On Tegna’s earnings call Thursday, CEO Dave Lougee said some of its new network affiliation deals don’t have fixed fees.

Also Read: Scripps CEO Defends Broadcast as Stocks Fall During Earnings Season

“The majority of these subscribers are now tied to a variable payment model when it comes to our reverse-compensation payments, tying payments to subscriber counts,” Lougee said. 

Lougee noted that Tegna in January renewed its affiliation agreement with NBC, which covers 20 markets and 21 million households.

Some other big broadcasters said they were keen on putting their payments to the networks on a variable basis.

On Gray Television’s call Wednesday, CEO Hilton Howell noted that “all the affiliates of the content companies — cable. satellite and virtual — pay for all channels on a per-sub basis.” Meanwhile, “broadcasters are the only people who are paying the conglomerates on a fixed-fee basis. And so I think the simple answer is that we should be paying on a per-sub basis as well.”

On Nexstar Media Group’s call Wednesday, reverse comp payments came up, but Nexstar execs said the issue wasn’t a simple one of fixed versus variable.

“I think that you have to understand that our agreements are more nuanced even than that,” Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said.

“Even where we have what you might consider to be fixed arrangements, maybe there are collars around the bandwidth of both growth and contraction, and there are all kinds of elements that go into baking the cake with each of the networks we're on,” Sook said. “I mean they are multifaceted, they are very complex, take a long time to negotiate, and money isn't always the only thing we talk about.”

Sook said he didn’t want to comment on Nexstar’s relationship with any of the networks.

“There are dynamic discussions happening in real time. And I would just say that everyone at the table is aware of what's going on in the industry and that the sands are shifting under our feet. And there is sensitivity to that all around the table,” he said.

“Having been on both sides of the table for those discussions, I think I have probably unique appreciation for the fact that they are each very different, complex,” added Nexstar president and chief operating officer Mike Biard, a former Fox distribution executive. 

“Focusing on a single aspect of those relationships, I think, misses the point,“ Biard said. “Certainly, this is the point from our perspective, which is we're going to manage the entire relationship to the net cost. And I know there's been focus on the fixed-cost aspect that some have talked about. At the right price, I would take fixed cost. It’s all about how that cost works through our business, and that's what we're focused on.”

Although network executives declined to discuss the issue, they would likely take a variable deal if the numbers were in their favor.

Gross retransmission fees were estimated to rise 3% to $14.8 billion this year by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Growth is expected to slow, with fees reaching $15.93 billion in 2027. Affiliates are estimated to keep 48% to 50% of the gross fees, with the rest going to networks.

When stations started getting cash retransmission payments from distributors, the networks argued that national programming, particularly sports, was a big part of what those distributors were paying for, and they wanted a cut of retrans cash.

Originally, the networks took a percentage of retransmission revenue, with some stations paying 50%. 

About 10 years ago, CBS started to ask affiliates to pay a fixed programming fee rather than a percentage of the retransmission payments they negotiated with distributors.

CBS argued that its costs, particularly for long-term sports rights, are fixed and that the affiliate’s payments should also be fixed, matching cost certainty with revenue predictability. (A fixed payment also insures against affiliates allocating a bigger share of retrans payments to the independent stations they own, reducing how much they have to share with the networks.)

Nearly all of CBS’s affiliate deals are for fixed fees, as are Fox’s, sources said.

Now affiliates are pushing to go back to a percentage scheme.

The parent companies of the Big Four networks also own stations and cable networks, so they have a good handle on how many subscribers their affiliates will have through the life of what are typically three-year agreements.

With that knowledge, some industry execs believe the networks would try to negotiate percentage deals that would ultimately generate the same revenue as a fixed fee arrangement.

Network executives said the payment should reflect the value the network brings to the station, but station leaders have said the presence of network programming on network-owned streaming platforms is changing that equation.

“What we have said consistently is we pay [networks] for programming and exclusivity of that programming,” Nexstar’s Sook said. “And to the extent the program is becoming less exclusive, it is less valuable to us, and we potentially will pay you less over time.”

It’s worth noting, though, that affiliates get carriage fees when their signals and local programming are carried by streaming services like Paramount Plus (CBS).

Once upon a time, the networks compensated their affiliates millions of dollars for carrying national programming and advertising in their markets. Now the stations pay the networks. That’s why the stations’ current payments are called reverse compensation. And that was a long time ago.

A top Nexstar Media Group executive told analysts concerned about the impact the sports streaming joint venture announced by The Walt Disney Co., Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, would have on broadcast stations that the station group wasn’t sure the venture would launch.

News of the venture sent TV station stocks lower earlier this month amid fear it would further cut into pay TV subscribers and reduce station retransmission fees, which are figured on a per-subscriber basis.  That put it on the top of the agenda as companies including the E.W. Scripps Co., and Gray Television reported earnings

On Nexstar’s fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts Wednesday, president and chief operating officer Mike Biard said there has been a lot of misunderstanding about the venture.

“To date, we have more questions than answers about the proposed product, including assurance that it will actually launch,” Biard said. “We know launching a new streaming startup will be challenging, including potential regulatory hurdles, lawsuits and other complicating factors surrounding the JV. So we'll have to see how this all plays out.”

Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have been sued by Fubo, another streamer focusing on sports. The Department of Justice is also reportedly examining the venture.

Biard, a former Fox distribution executive,  said that the market overreacted to the initial announcement of the venture because it misinterpreted how it would operate.

“We have confirmation that it will function in the same manner as other vMVPDs that distribute our Fox and ABC affiliated stations,” he said. “To be clear, Nexstar will have the option of opting in to secure carriage and compensation for our ABC and Fox affiliated stations. As such this would be an additive incremental revenue stream for Nexstar.”

The three companies forming the venture have an interested in preserving linear networks, he added.

”We believe the three JV partners understand the value of the linear ecosystem as pay TV revenues remain vital to each of them,“ Biard said. “They’ve demonstrated this in their respective approaches to [direct-to-consumer], largely avoiding the strategies of some of their peers that have undermined the value of their own core linear networks. There is no question that the bundled linear video, particularly broadcast continues to be the most effective distribution platform for sports content and the most attractive value proposition to customers for access to the most compelling sports, news and entertainment, all in one place.”

Biard noted that the interest in forming a sports venture validates Nexstar’s strategy of putting more sports on The CW network and its stations.

Nexstar Media Group’s profits fell in the fourth quarter on a weak ad market and a loss at the CW Network.

Net income fell 44% to $100 million, or $3.32 a share, from $178 million, or $5.30 a share, a year ago.

Revenue fell 12.3% to $1.3 billion

The CW network, of which Nexstar owns a 75% stake, had a loss of $50 million on an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) basis, compared to a $64 million loss in the third quarter

The CW generated $55 million in revenue in Q4, down from $66 million.

Television advertising revenue fell 35.5% to $479 million. The big drop was mostly due to the lack of significant political advertising in a non-election year, but core advertising revenue (excluding political spending) was down 5.9% to $449 million.

Distribution revenue rose 14.3% to $704 million.

Digital revenue fell 5.4% to $106 million.

For 2024, Nexstar said it expects adjusted EBITDA to be between $2.085 billion and $2.195 billion. 

“Nexstar’s fourth-quarter financial results outperformed consensus expectations in key financial metrics,” said CEO Perry Sook.

“The power of the broadcast model and its ability to reach the largest audience of any medium with important news, sports and entertainment content is as strong as ever, reflected by the record audience delivery for NFL and Super Bowl, Grammys and other live sports and event programming,” Sook said. “As we move into 2024, an election year, we look forward to once again demonstrating the value of broadcast television to candidates and campaigns looking to communicate to the electorate through political advertising on television.”

Nexstar Media Group said it named Chris Pruitt VP and general manager of its operations in Springfield, Missouri.

Pruitt will oversee KBRK, KOZL and their digital operations, plus Mission Broadcasting’s KOLR, which Nexstar runs under a management agreement.

He replaces Mike Spruill, who runs Nexstar’s station in Nashville and reports to Mike Vaughn, senior VP and regional manager for Nexstar broadcasting.

“Chris is the perfect choice to lead our media operations in Springfield, I know he is looking forward to getting back to a market where the local audience more closely matches his interests in nature and outdoor activities like hunting and fishing,” said Vaughn.

“In addition, just as he will do in Springfield, Chris has managed major network affiliates across multiple television stations in Waco and Twin Falls, and his recent large-market experience will be a real asset in this new role. Throughout his career, Chris has been successful by connecting to viewers and advertisers with the kind of local content that is both relevant and meaningful, and I am confident he will do the same in Springfield,” Vaughn said.

Previously, Pruit oversaw Nexstar’s stations in Houston.  Before that, he ran stations in the Waco, Temple and Bryan, Texas, market..

“I have thoroughly enjoyed my nearly four years in Houston, and I’m proud of everything the team at KIAH CW39 accomplished—they are the best,” Pruitt said. “I am just as happy to be joining our broadcast and digital teams in Springfield, and look forward to forging a deep relationship with the community. I am grateful to Nexstar for giving me this opportunity and I can’t wait to get started.”  

Nexstar Media Group said it named Stacey Lynn Schulman as executive VP, platform marketing and intelligence, a new position at the company, effective immediately.

An industry veteran, Schulman has been running her own company Before that, she held posts at Katz Media Group, the TVB and Turner Broadcasting.

She will reports to Nexstar executive VP and chief revenue officer Michael Strober, another former Turner executive.

“We are thrilled to have Stacey join our leadership team and bring her strategic vision and passion for marketing and research to Nexstar Advertising,” said. Strober. “Her experience in pioneering innovative marketing strategies, combined with her expertise in media research, will play a pivotal role in advancing our platforms and enhancing our client-first sales opportunities.”

In her new post, Schulman will be responsible for driving demand and developing unique creative opportunities for advertisers to connect with Nexstar’s local and national audiences.She will also  lead Nexstar Advertising’s integrated marketing efforts and oversee the sales intelligence business unit.

“Nexstar has built an incredible portfolio of local, national, and digital assets,” Schulman said. “I’m excited to work with this progressive team to realize the potential of more fully engaging audiences at the intersection of content and community.”

Nexstar Media Group’s  board of directors has decided that separating the jobs of chairman and CEO would be a good idea, but it won’t be implemented until founder Perry Sook leaves the company.

Sook, Nexstar’s chairman and CEO, is the company’s third largest shareholders with a 4.6% stake in the broadcaster. His current employment agreement with Nexstar runs through March 31, 2026.

According to the company, the Board believes the adoption of this policy is in the best interests of the company and its shareholders, as the new policy does not interfere with Sook’s continued leadership

of Nexstar and the benefits he brings to Nexstar, while establishing a plan that provides a runway for the most qualified individuals to serve as CEO and chairperson in the future.

Sook founded Nexstar in 1996. It has grown into one of the largest broadcasters, with annualized revenues of more than $5 billion.

Nexstar Media Group has agreed to a multiyear extension of its agreement with Nielsen, which will continue as a preferred provider of local and national TV audience-measurement services to the broadcaster.

The agreement follows a similar announcement from Comscore earlier this month.

The new deal with Nielsen covers ratings for Nexstar TV stations in 116 markets, The CW Network, NewsNation and Antenna TV.

Nexstar signed previous deals with Nielsen in 2020 and Comscore in 2019.

Last year, Nexstar invited measurement companies to submit proposals for improved audience measurement and complained that its viewership was being understated. 

Nielsen, which has long dominated TV’s audience-measurement business, has been under pressure from a group of newer companies that use big data from set-top boxes and smart TVs to estimate how many viewers are tuned in.

Companies are also looking to cut costs, including how much they spend on research. 

Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed, but Nexstar’s decision to keep both Nielsen and Comscore shows that Nielsen still has a good grip on the industry as it rolls out Nielsen One, which adds big data to measure a more fragmented environment in which streaming increasingly dominates viewing.

“We are pleased to extend our relationship with Nielsen and are excited about the potential for Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurement solution to more accurately measure all the places where consumers engage with Nexstar’s valuable content — over the air, via cable and satellite, over-the-top, online and out-of-home,” said Nexstar chief revenue officer Michael Strober said.  

After The CW added LIV Golf to its lineup last February, Nexstar hired iSpot.TV and VideoAmp to measure the audience across platforms and got numbers significantly different from Nielsen’s figures.

“Nexstar is a valued, longstanding customer, and we’re proud to continue to serve as one of its preferred providers of audience data and ad measurement,” Amilcar Perez, chief revenue officer at Nielsen, said. “Nielsen’s unique mix of unrivaled data-science expertise, paired with our comprehensive measurement, sets us apart from other providers. We remain committed to bringing the industry and our customers data they can trade on with confidence.”

Nexstar Media Group has named Bill Dallman as VP and general manager of its broadcast and digital operations in Grand Junction, Colorado, effective February 12.

Dallman, who had been general manager of KARE Minneapolis, succeeds Sandra Zoldowski.

He will report to Traci Wilkinson, senior VP and regional manager for Nexstar’s broadcasting division.

“Bill is a seasoned media executive with a history of success in the broadcasting industry, and he is a great choice to lead our broadcast and digital operations in Grand Junction,” Wilkinson said. “He is an innovative thinker and has a track record of enhancing broadcast and digital operations by focusing on strategic leadership and team development. We’re looking forward to the fresh perspectives he will bring to Grand Junction.”

Before joining KARE, Dallman held posts at KOMO Seattle and KCBS-KCAL Los Angeles. He was also part of the executive team that launched FS1.

“I am extremely grateful to Nexstar for this opportunity and looking forward to working with the teams across our operations in Grand Junction,” Dallman said. “These television stations and digital brands have a legacy of service and commitment to their local communities and deliver local programming and advertising solutions that drive viewership and marketing results. I'm excited about the opportunities ahead and can’t wait to get started.”

Nexstar Media Group said it signed a long-term deal with Comscore to provide cross-platform audience measurement metrics for its local stations, its The CW network nationally and its digital assets.

The contract follows a process in which Nexstar invited measurement companies to submit proposals for improved audience measurement.

Nielsen, with its panel-based method, has been under pressure from rival measurement firms, including Comscore and iSpot.TV, which base their audience estimates on big data from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

“I think this is one of those inflection points in a very critical year,” Steve Bagdasarian, chief commercial officer at Comscore, told Broadcasting+Cable.

“It’s fantastic to work with a large-scale broadcaster and be their choice as it relates to currency measurement,” Bagdasarian said “I think they’re seeing what we see as well about the future of how media is going to be bought, sold and traded.”

Nexstar signed measurement deals with Nielsen in 2020 and Comscore in 2019.  

After The CW added LIV Golf to its lineup in February, Nexstar hired iSpot.TV and VideoAmp to measure the audience across platforms and got numbers significantly different from Nielsen’s figures.

When Nexstar launched its request for proposal (RFP) process, it complained that it was not getting accurate audience numbers and that its audiences were undercounted across platforms, which costs advertising dollars.

“Comscore’s ability to provide us with total audience measurement metrics across our local television stations and websites, NewsNation, The CW Network, and The Hill, enables our cross-platform sales team to leverage our unique scale and reach to customize bespoke advertising and marketing solutions for our clients,” Michael Biard, Nexstar’s president and chief operating officer, said. “We look forward to offering our advertisers deeper insight into who is watching and interacting with our programming and when they are doing so, enabling them to focus on the audiences they want to reach.”

Nexstar declined to say to what degree it continues to work with Nielsen. And while Comscore had made inroads against Nielsen in local markets, Nielsen remains dominant nationally.

“Nielsen still remains, obviously, a significant incumbent,” Bagdasarian said. 

And it's an incumbent that station managements have long complained about and is criticized for charging monopolistic rates for its services.

“I think that we are fairly priced for the capabilities that we have and I think the market has historically seen us from a price-to-value standpoint to be in a more favorable camp,” Comscore's Bagdasarian said.

 Financial terms were not disclosed.

Comscore says it provides measurement across  210 TV market. With its single methodology for both local and national measurement, Comscore’s audience numbers for all 41,704 zip codes roll up into a national audience total.

Nexstar expects Comscore to deliver more precise audience insights across screens to help advertisers optimize total reach and measure the holistic cross-platform campaign with de-duplicated in-flight monitoring of key metrics such as reach and frequency, incrementality, and co-viewing.

“Look, it's fantastic to work with a large scale broadcaster like Nexstar and be their choice as it relates to currency measurement,” Bagdasarian said.

Measurement is especially crucial in 2024, with the elections coming up, not to mention the Olympics. 

“This is a signal that the concept of alternative currencies is going to continue to be a big topic.” he said. “I think it sends a strong signal to the market that there is the ability to think differently about how you might have invested  your measurement resources in the past,” he said.

Bernie Ritter has been named news director at WRIC Richmond, Virginia. He comes from WNCT Greenville, North Carolina, where he was the news director. Both stations are part of Nexstar Media Group. 

Known as 8News, WRIC is an ABC affiliate.

“Throughout his career, Bernie has demonstrated a commitment to excellence, team building, and innovation in news production. His strategic vision, combined with a deep understanding of audience engagement, positions him to lead this accomplished and growing newsroom,” said Steven Blanchard, VP and general manager, WRIC. 

Ritter was the WNCT news director for seven years. He also worked at News 12 New Jersey, Al Jazeera America, ESPN, WPXI Pittsburgh and WEWS Cleveland. 

Ritter succeeds Shane Moreland in running the WRIC newsroom. 

“Being a journalist is all about service to the public, informing our community, being balanced, hyper-local focused and telling the stories of the people in our neighborhoods,” he said. “I can’t wait to join the 8News family, and to become part of the vibrant Richmond community.”  

Ritter earned a bachelor of arts degree in communications from Duquesne University. 

Richmond-Petersburg is DMA No. 56. 

Nexstar Media Group said it signed a multiyear time brokerage agreement with Londen Media Group,  owner of KAZT Phoenix, which will become a The CW affiliate on February 1.

The CW programming has been airing on one of KNXV’s digital multicast channels.

Under Nexstar’s agreement with KAZT, Nexstar will provide the station with programming and other services, including management of sales, promotion, marketing and technical operations.

The deal means Nexstar will own or provide services to stations in 10 of the top 15 markets and 18 of the top 25.

“We’re pleased to enter into this agreement with KAZT, especially since Arizona will once again be a battleground state in this year’s Presidential election,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. 

“We’re looking forward to helping KAZT expand its service to Phoenix-area viewers and forge an even deeper connection to the community. We know that adding the live sports and entertainment programming of The CW Network will enable KAZT to establish new and meaningful relationships with a variety of advertising and marketing clients,” Alford said.

Nexstar Media Group and Fubo said they reached a new multiyear distribution agreement covering 89 Nexstar-owned TV stations and the company’s NewsNation cable network.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Fubo will be streaming 37 affiliates of The CW network, owned by Nexstar. Since acquiring control of The CW, Nexstar has been adding sports to the network’s lineup, increasing its appeal to the sports-focused Fubo.

The CW stations carry LIV Golf, college football and men’s basketball from the Atlantic Coast Conference and NASCAR auto racing.

Fubo will also be carrying 25 MyNetworkTV affiliates, 23 ABC affiliates and four independent stations owned by Nexstar.

Nexstar stations in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Panama City, Florida will become affiliates of The CW starting January 1. Nexstar said its stations in those markets will carry the network on digital subchannels. 

In Grand Rapids, Nexstar owns WOOD and WOTV, which are NBC and ABC affiliates, and MyNetworkTV station WXSP. WOTV becomes the CW affiliate. Sinclair currently has The CW station WMMT. 

In Sioux Falls, Nexstar has KELO-KDLO, a CBS-MyNetworkTV affiliate that will add The CW. Gray Television has KSFY, an ABC-The CW affiliate. 

In Panama City, Nexstar owns ABC affiliate WMBB, which takes on The CW. Gray owns WJHG, which airs NBC and The CW. 

“The addition of CW programming to these Nexstar-owned stations will bring the number of Nexstar and partner-owned CW affiliates to 45, covering more than 39% of U.S. TV Households,” Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said. “As The CW’s No. 1 affiliate group, we are very pleased to be taking this step, especially as several new entertainment shows get set to premiere and ACC college basketball moves deeper into its season — WWE NXT in fall 2024 also will be a big hit. As a result, our CW-affiliated stations will be able to offer advertisers even more opportunities to reach viewers.”

Nexstar owns 75% of The CW.

“These stations are great additions to the CW family,” Dennis Miller, president of The CW Network, said. “Each station has a deep relationship with its viewers, advertisers, and the communities it serves, which is exactly what we look for in an affiliate — each will be a superb ambassador for our programming.”

In September, eight CW affiliates in the CBS group went independent. 

Nexstar Media Group reported lower third-quarter net income, impacted by losses at The CW network.

Net income fell to $25 million, or 71 cents a share, from $289 million or $7.45 a share a year ago.

The CW contributed a $ 60 million loss in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).

Revenue in the period was down 10.8% year to year, to $1.132  billion.

Nexstar’s advertising revenue fell 22.5% to $410 million in a non-election year.

Core advertising revenue was down 2.3% to $391 million and political advertising was $19 million, compared to $129 million a year ago.

Distribution revenue was down 6.7% to $598 million, partly because of a carriage fee dispute with DirecTV that led to a lengthy blackout.

Digital revenues were up $15.1 million to $99 million.

“Third-quarter financial results primarily reflect the year-over-year decline in cyclical political advertising as well as the distribution revenue impact related to our successful negotiations with a distribution partner,” CEO Perry Sook said. “We expect the favorable terms of new distribution agreements reached year-to-date, in 2022 and other upcoming renewals, to drive strong, high-margin distribution revenue growth.”

Sook added that for 2024: “Nexstar will realize upside from presidential election year political advertising, reduced losses related to The CW Network and an improving economic environment. We have a clear set of objectives for creating the greatest long-term value for our shareholders and will continue to deploy cash in a manner that will deliver the highest returns.”
 

Nexstar Media Group said it reached a new multiyear distribution agreement on Cox Communications cable systems.

The agreement covers retransmission consent for 38 Nexstar-owned TV stations in 23 markets. 

It also covers digital broadcast networks Antenna TV and Rewind TV and cable news network NewsNation.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Nexstar had a three-month blackout before reaching a carriage agreement with DirecTV in September.

Nexstar Media Group said it extended its distribution deal with ReachTV to include the CW Network’s sports programming and cable news channel NewsNation.

The agreement puts the programming in front of 50 million monthly viewers in hotels and airports.

“Nexstar always looks for ways to extend the distribution of NewsNation and The CW Network to new audiences,” said Dana Zimmer, Nexstar’s president of distribution.  “This new partnership with ReachTV enables both of these national networks to deliver their exclusive live content to millions of travelers in hotels and airports across the United States, and provides our advertisers with access to new and even larger audiences.”  

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Acquired by Nexstar in 2022, The CW has been adding sports programming to its weekend lineup this year to boost viewing and revenue.

“ReachTV is thrilled to expand its live news offerings with NewsNation, and its live sports programming in partnership with The CW, to provide LIV Golf, ACC college football, and ACC men’s and women’s college basketball,” said Lynnwood Bibbens, CEO of ReachTV.  “Delivering these exciting and diverse new live sports offerings will help us meet demand from our audience of travelers, and build on our existing NFL rights to air every single NFL game, making ReachTV a new destination for live sports appointment viewing.” 

Maybe the sky isn’t falling on broadcast. 

Gray Television on Tuesday became the latest large station owner to stand up and tell Wall Street that business is good because the outlook for distribution revenues —including retransmission-consent fees — are expected to grow at a healthy rate.

Nexstar Media Group made a similar presentation last week and a few days later E.W. Scripps said it expects 15% growth in distribution revenue and a 40% jump in net distribution dollars.

Wall Street seems to be listening. Gray stock was up 3% Tuesday morning. 

Other broadcasters were showing gains Tuesday (October 17): E.W. Scripps was up 5.25%, Nexstar Media Group was up 2%, Sinclair was up nearly 2% and Tegna edged up 0.34%.

Over the last five days, station-group stocks have been on the upswing, with Scripps up 17%, Gray up 0%, Sinclair up 8%, Nexstar up 5% and Tegna up 4%.

Despite the gains, the broadcast stocks remained near their 52-week lows.

Broadcast has been suffering from the perception that the TV world is turning to streaming, leaving local stations in the dust. Advertising has been weak and it appeared that it would be difficult for stations to wring increases in retransmission fees from pay TV providers whose subscriber bases are eroding due to cord-cutting.

Two big retrans disputes added to the gloom, with Nexstar stations blacked out on DirecTV and The Walt Disney Co. going dark on Charter, which declared its business would be just fine without Disney’s cable networks, broadcast networks and stations.

When the dust settled and Charter and Disney made a deal, Nexstar declared stations a winner. 

Gray’s new presentation also maintains  the Charter-Disney agreement is positive for stations.

On the first page of its presentation, Gray declares “we believe that broadcast retrans remains significantly undervalued” and “we believe that the current environment favors continued growth for retrans revenues.”

Gray also argued that “the network/affiliate model aligns participants’ interests in curbing MVPD sub churn and in growing retrans for affiliates.”

The Disney/Charter deal, which allows Charter to no longer carry several less-watched Disney cable channels, will shift viewing and carriage fees in the stations’ direction, Gray said.

And with the regional sports network business imploding, sports teams and leagues are moving high-rated games from cable to broadcast, which will lead to higher retrans fees. 

Also Read: Phoenix Suns Fast-Break to Broadcast With Gray From Bankrupt Bally RSN 

Gray said that if half of RSN feels were reallocated to broadcast stations, retrans revenues would rise by $3 billion, or 23%.

In its conclusion, Gray said that “broadcasters continue to deliver Premium Content that is the most watched and valued by consumers. Gray in particular provides the most valued content across its well-diversified footprint of 113 large, midsize and small markets.”

The broadcaster reiterated that networks and affiliates are aligned in preserving and growing retrans revenues, and that broadcasters and distributors are aligned in slowing subscriber churn.

“The MVPDs’ $40 billion annual spending on linear programming fees will continue to be reallocated to premium content providers, and especially to broadcasters, particularly as the number of cable nets and RSNs continues to decline,” Gray said.

Amid the gloom and doom from the linear television business, the biggest broadcaster, Nexstar Media Group, has released a new presentation aimed at convincing investors that broadcast not only has a future, but a bright one.

The presentation starts off by arguing that the recent deal that ended a blackout between The Walt Disney Co. and Charter Communications is actually a positive one for broadcast.

How does Nexstar argue that? Well, first of all, Charter decided not to drop the ABC network and stations. It also kept ESPN and live sports in the traditional pay TV bundle.

Also Read: How the Disney-Charter Deal May Affect Affiliate, DTC Revenue

Nexstar argues that the deal recognizes that “broadcast station content is the most premium content,” and that the new Charter offering, including streaming, should reduce churn, stabilizing the pay TV universe and reining in cord-cutting.

Nexstar also argues that by eliminating long-tail, less-watched networks, more money will be spent on premium content like broadcast TV.

In the presentation, Nexstar also argued that linear media now generates all media-company profits while streaming and direct-to-consumer services produce red ink. Nexstar said 77% of video revenue at the big media companies comes from linear.

Nexstar also noted that the broadcast networks (and their affiliates) carry the most watched programming, including local news. 

If broadcast stations were paid retransmission fees equivalent to their ratings, revenue would be up between 35% to 78%, Nexstar said.

Speaking of sports, at a time when cable regional sports networks are imploding and streaming is taking more and more games, sports still draw large audiences on broadcast. Nexstar pointed to Thursday Night Football in its markets, where traditional viewing doubles streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and Clippers games in Los Angeles, where games on broadcast draw 99% more viewers than cable.

Nexstar concludes that “the future television ecosystem will favor broadcast television.”

The broadcaster argued:

1. That pay-TV programming bundles will be rationalized, freeing up dollars for premium content, like broadcast television.
2. That DTC content and services will be reintegrated within the linear bundle.
3. That content will move back to the most widely distributed networks — broadcast — to maximize advertising revenue.
4. That standalone pricing for DTC services will continue to increase to reduce DTC losses and rationalize pricing across platforms. 
5. That pay TV subscribers will continue to enjoy a superior experience enabling them to access all content in one aggregated product.

Nexstar noted that as the biggest of the broadcasters, its “scale and composition of high-quality content makes it a critical participant both to MVPDs/vMVPDs and networks.”

Trish Munn is coming back to WBTW Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to solo anchor the station’s weekday 9 a.m. and noon newscasts, and co-anchor the 4 p.m. news. Munn was at WBTW, known as News 13, from 2004 to 2014, as senior digital journalist, then Pee Dee bureau chief and finally as weekend anchor. 

She starts at WBTW October 16. She will solo anchor News 13 Now at 9 a.m. and News 13 at Noon, and co-anchor News 13 First Edition with Patsy Kelly at 4 p.m. 

After leaving WBTW, Munn became a professional photographer and opened her own studio. She also worked at Francis Marion University as director of public relations and as director of marketing for the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce.

“Trish says she missed news greatly. When she learned we had an open anchor position, she was one of the first to reach out to me,” said WBTW News Director Paul Caron. “Trish is excited to get back into the news side. With her experience and community knowledge, she’s a great fit for our news team.”

Nexstar Media Group owns WBTW, a CBS affiliate. Myrtle Beach-Florence is DMA No. 100.

Nexstar Media Group and DirecTV, which temporarily called off their three-month blackout to enable DirecTV subscribers to watch NFL games on Sunday, said on Monday they completed a long-term distribution agreement.

The agreement covers returning the 176 stations owned by Nexstar and its NewsNation cable network to DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse TV.

Terms were not disclosed, as is common in these situations, but DirecTV did not appear totally pleased by the outcome.

For one thing, the deal did not include the 27 stations owned by White Knight and Mission Broadcasting that are run by Nexstar under management agreements. Those stations have been blacked out since October.

The status of those stations is the subject of a federal antitrust suit by DirecTV and a complaint to the FCC. Those stations are also blacked out on Dish Network.

DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow also released a statement lamenting the state of retransmission consent negotiations.

“Unfortunately, over the past decade-plus. access to your programming has become a battleground for networks and stations to try to drive up higher rates,“ Morrow said. “As our customers, we recognize that while you may be able to access some programming over-the-air or on a streaming service during these periods, that is not the experience you expect. 

“We understand you have a choice among your TV providers and appreciate your ongoing loyalty during this renewal,“ he added. “That’s what will enable us to offer you more choice, personalization, and further value in future programming you pay to receive in your home.“

Currently, 37 stations owned by Hearst Television are blacked out on Dish Network.

Nexstar Media Group and DirecTV said they are close to an agreement and are temporarily ending the nearly three-month blackout of Nexstar’s stations and networks in time for Sunday’s National Football League games.

“In recognition and appreciation of the continued patience of DirecTV customers and Nexstar viewers, the companies have agreed to temporarily return the signals of the Nexstar-owned stations and national cable news network NewsNation to DirecTV , DirecTV Stream and U-verse while we both work to complete the terms of an agreement," the companies said in a statement early Sunday morning.

With more than 200 stations affected by the blackout, the companies are prioritizing returning the signals of the stations showing NFL games on Sunday afternoon (Fox and CBS affiliates) and Sunday night (NBC affiliates).

No details about the financial terms of a financial settlement were disclosed and the companies are expected to make a formal announcement when all the details are ironed out.

Since the start of the Nexstar-DirecTV blackout. Disney’s networks, including ESPN, and stations, were blacked out to Charter Communications pay-TV subscribers. The dispute led to a settlement that resulted in more revenue for Disney and more flexibility for Charter to not offer certain Disney networks and to be able to resell Disney streaming services Disney Plus and ESPN Plus.

Currently, 37 stations owned by Hearst Television are blacked out on Dish Network.

Comedian and media mogul Byron Allen has made a $10 billion offer for ABC and other linear networks owned by The Walt Disney Co., a spokesman for Allen and Allen Media Group confirmed.

TV station owner Nexstar Media Group, which bought The CW network, also has expressed interest in buying ABC and its stations from Disney.

Disney CEO Bob Iger at an investment conference in July said that the company’s linear networks, including ABC, may longer be “core” businesses for Disney, indicating a sale or a spinoff was being considered.

Disney has been at the center of the changes affecting the TV business. It jumped into streaming with Disney Plus, gaining millions of subscribers but losing billions along the way. It is also considering selling a stake in ESPN. 

Disney’s networks were blacked out in a dispute with Charter Communications, which declared the cable bundle was broken and that it was content to proceed without ESPN and other Disney channels as long as their best content was going towards its streaming properties.

The dispute was resolved before the opening Monday Night Football game this week, with Disney letting Charter drop some Disney cable channels and resell Disney Plus and ESPN Plus.

The Allen bid, first reported by Bloomberg, is for the ABC Television Network and the eight ABC Owned Television Stations, plus cable networks including FX and National Geographic.

Allen, who has already acquired The Weather Channel and a group of TV stations, has said he’s prepared to spend as much as $10 billion to buy stations and other TV assets.

The bid is reportedly based on an 8 times multiple of estimated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) generated by the Disney TV businesses. The price could be adjusted based on the actual EBITDA figures.

Disney did not respond to requests for comment on the bid by Allen. Disney has said it is considering strategic alternatives for the TV business, but no decision about a sale has been made.

There was also a report that Disney has held talks with Nexstar about selling ABC and the stations.

Former Nexstar president Tom Carter, now an adviser to Nexstar chairman and CEO Perry Sook, told an investment conference earlier this week that there would be “little friction” if Nexstar tried to buy the ABC stations. “We think there could be some opportunities depending on how things fall out.”

 Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall estimates the ABC network and its owned-and-operated stations generate about $2.2 billion in retransmission-consent fees from distributors and programming fees from affiliates, plus $2.7 billion in advertising revenue, for a total of about $5 billion. 

Cahall estimates that the network breaks even in terms of EBITDA and the stations generate about $565 million in EBITDA.

“Any buyer of ABC would require long-term programming agreement for current shows from Disney’s studios and ESPN sports currently on ABC,“ Cahall said. “We think this would all justify an EV/EBITDA multiple closer to 8 times.” 

Cahall said he thought investors would be in favor of Disney shedding its lower-growth linear TV assets.