Nexstar Media Group, Inc. Common Stock Bank of America 2026 Media,Communications & Entertainment Conference

Well, I think it is a great question. I think of us as a local media company with what is approaching national scale. We have focused primarily on the local end of the media ecosystem. We think it is surprisingly durable. We also think it is the most sticky part of the media ecosystem. We have business relationships with approximately 47,000 SMBs in 80% of the U.S. We operate in 44 states, so that is approaching national scale. But we look at everything through the ends of kind of bottoms up what is good for our local stations, which The CW has been for those owned and operated stations. What will benefit the stations by making changes at the network or adding NewsNation, a national news service, on top of what we do locally.

I think the correct way to think about us is in the local media space being without peer in terms of our size and scale and balance sheet and flexibility, but also just being a local media company, but with national scale. Being able to do local activation at scale, I think is our secret sauce.

Oh, yeah. I'll take some of that. First and foremost, I think it's our programming. I think people tend to overlook the fact that almost 50% of our audience comes from our local news and our other local programming that we source ourselves. So we, in and of ourselves, are a very important programmer for the local communities that we service and the advertisers that do business with us. I think that's number one. Number two is our distribution model. There's about 20% of the audience out there today that receives their television signals over-the-air. So when you are thinking about any sort of third-party programmer, like a sports organization or any other kind of entertainment content, you're immediately getting 20% more audience than what you would get if you were just in the pay TV ecosystem on a standalone basis.

We've seen that time and time again, even with our own The CW Network, when we acquired the rights for the O'Reilly Auto Parts series for NASCAR, we've seen double-digit, 20%-plus improvement in ratings that accrues to the benefit of the network and the sports league, and then also with respect to the viewers. So there's incremental value in the distribution that we bring to bear that is very important. Then I think, the evolution of this ecosystem is, I think, come in our favor. If you think about over time, what has been the reason that you've seen the decrease in the pay TV ecosystem and that attrition? Well, it's really been because you've had a lot of these major network companies launch these direct-to-consumer services at price points that were very low.

What you're now seeing is those price points are now increasing because those direct-to-consumer services were generating massive losses for these larger media companies, and that's no longer sustainable. As you're seeing those prices increase, you're seeing the distributors actually rebundle some of these services into their pay TV profile. You are getting an ability to now, as a consumer, access whatever content you want on whatever method you want, but you're going to be paying the same price. That is what we think is very important, is that we are, Nexstar and our content, we are available. We're available on any sort of service that you're going to want. We're available on streaming. We're on YouTube television. We are on Hulu. We are on Peacock. We're on Paramount. We are over-the-air. We are on via the satellite companies. We're on via the cable companies.

I think over time, as we see the pricing more start to equalize, you are going to start to see a stabilization in the overall ecosystem, and that is going to accrue to the benefit of the broadcasters.

Well, I think that Leigh Ann addressed the distribution paradigm, which now with the average streaming service is $150 a month for the full package. That is about where the bundle is or was when people started to gravitate away from it. So it is no longer a skinny bundle. It is a very robust bundle, and if pricing is roughly the same, people might tend to stay where they are, because I still think that the traditional cable or MVPD bundle offers a superior navigation tool to a la carte streaming services. So if attrition begins to level out, I think that is probably one of the primary issues that people have had some existential dread about the melting ice cube nature of the sector. From an advertising perspective, there is no question that buying linear television is more expensive of a process than buying digital for the agencies.

We have a former CFO of an agency holding company on our board of directors, and it is indisputable that the agencies have less of a margin placing linear than they do placing digital, which it is surprising to me we do as well as we do if the frictional costs are higher. We, Nexstar, are attempting to address that by developing a seamless pitch-to-pay system that we hope to be able to bring out and at least announce and talk about at next year's upfront, that would allow an advertiser to go through the process, access customer data, and go pitch to pay, and basically access linear television inventory more in a programmatic fashion.

Which puts us then on par from a buy-sell process with digital, and I happen to believe that money will flow to the sector because people see the superior value proposition of the linear relationship that we deliver at the endpoint. I think that from that perspective, we are trying to address the two things that I think are the biggest drag on the business, and we also, the money has migrated to connected TV. We have dramatically increased and will continue to grow our presence in the connected TV space to at least be competitive and offer a full suite of audience extension products in addition to our primary linear or digital products.