There’ll be no worries about any potential “great affiliation swap” in any of the markets where Nexstar Media Group and its joint operating partner Mission Broadcasting have stations.
That’s because Nexstar and Mission have a new affiliation deal in hand with NBC.
The Dallas-based owner of broadcast TV stations, now the nation’s largest thanks to its Tribune Media merger, reached a four-year agreement to renew the existing NBC Television Network affiliations of their stations in 21 markets across the country.
Collectively, the stations reach approximately 11.4% of U.S. television households, or about 12.5 million homes.
The new affiliation agreements cover 18 Nexstar owned stations, including two recent acquisitions, and three Mission stations.
The previous affiliation agreements were set to expire in December 2019.
“We are proud to again partner with NBC,” said Nexstar Media Group President/CEO Perry A. Sook. “Our new affiliation agreements reflect the importance of our stations to NBC and to the viewers of the local communities we serve. These agreements also mark the successful completion of essentially all of Nexstar’s outstanding network affiliation renewals for 2019.”
At the same time, Nexstar is continuing to finalizing new distribution renewals addressing more than 70% of its subscriber base.
“Together, these network and distribution renewals give us solid confidence in our expectations regarding the future growth of Nexstar’s net retransmission revenues,” Sook said.
Retransmission revenue is key for Nexstar, as it represented a larger dollar amount than its advertising revenue, ex-political, prior to the Tribune merger.
Phil Martzolf, President of Affiliate Relations at NBC Broadcasting, added, “We have a strong partnership with Nexstar, and look forward to our continued collaboration to bring NBC programming to millions of households across the country.”
