Nexstar was founded in 1996 by broadcast industry veteran Perry A. Sook to consolidate television stations in mid-size markets across the United States.  Since its inception, the Company has actively and successfully remained at the forefront of industry innovation by leveraging its award-winning local programming and content into complementary revenue streams.  Reflecting this focus, Nexstar has emerged as an industry leader and has demonstrated strong financial growth for more than a decade with 2008 net revenues reaching approximately $285 million. 

Shortly after its formation, Nexstar purchased WYOU-TV of Scranton, Pennsylvania and over the course of the following year, acquired additional stations throughout Indiana, Missouri, Texas and Pennsylvania.  At the time, deregulation of the U.S. broadcast industry was occurring in the wake of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which limited the number of television stations a broadcaster could own in a market.  As a result, Nexstar innovated the concept of shared services agreements that allowed it to provide sales, news and other services to a second station in a given market.  Theses agreements capitalize on Nexstar’s strong station operating disciplines while creating an additional revenue stream. 

From 1996 to 2003, Nexstar made several station transactions, including its purchase of the 15 television station portfolio of Quorum Broadcasting, which expanded the size of the Company to 42 owned or operated stations in 26 markets.  Reflecting its growing scale and industry prominence, Nexstar Broadcasting completed its initial public stock offering on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in late 2003. 

With a solid television platform in place, Nexstar focused its efforts on positioning the Company for future growth and turned its attention towards creating ancillary revenue streams.  In 2005, Nexstar pioneered the receipt of retransmission consent revenues from cable system partners and other distributors, thus validating the value of its award winning local content and leading national programming, thus creating a blueprint for its broadcasting peers.  The Company recently extended its long-term record of generating growing value from station programming as it reached new multi-year retransmission consent agreements with 179 cable operators, direct broadcast satellite and telecommunications providers, which will generate more than $75 million in revenue for Nexstar. 

Continuing on its path of creating new revenue sources by leveraging its local broadcast activities, in 2007 Nexstar launched its innovative e-MEDIA platform with a “community portal” approach that leverages the brand, the content and the local relationships of Nexstar’s television stations into a separate business while offering additional content and interactive options for consumers.  Nexstar’s hyper-local micro sites actively support and build communities in each of the markets they serve while providing new cost-effective marketing solutions for advertisers.  The Company’s differentiated approach to building local web sites has been met with an excellent response from web users and advertisers resulting in Nexstar’s 2008 achievement to double its annual e-MEDIA revenue.   

As a further endorsement of Nexstar’s industry leadership and management capabilities, in early 2009 the Company entered into a management agreement with Four Points Media Group, whereby Nexstar will provide management services for Four Points’ seven station, four market portfolio in exchange for an annual multi-million dollar fee and additional incentive compensation.  The Company intends to pursue additional agreements of this type. 

Nexstar has continued to selectively build its station base and the Company now owns, operates, programs or provides sales and other services to 54 full power television stations and 9 digital multicast channels in 34 mid-sized markets across 14 States.  Nexstar’s television station group includes NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, MyNetworkTV and The CW affiliates and reaches approximately 13 million viewers or 11.5% of total U.S. households.  For a list of all 63 stations, affiliations and markets, please refer to the stations tab on our website.