After years of acquiring assets and programming, the largest independent television broadcaster in the United States is ready to make some cuts.
This week, Nexstar Media Group revealed it will soon hand out pink slips to slightly more than 200 workers at some of its local TV stations and local and national sales offices, a move that is meant to help streamline operations and make the company more efficient in the years to come.
Nexstar currently employs around 13,000 workers across more than 200 local TV stations, some of which it operates through shared services agreements with other companies. Stations in its portfolio include WPIX-TV (Channel 11) in New York City, KTLA (Channel 5) in Los Angeles, WGN-TV (Channel 9) in Chicago, KRON-TV (Channel 4) in San Francisco and KTSM (Channel 9) in El Paso, Texas.
The broadcaster also operates the cable news channel NewsNation, has a majority ownership stake in the CW Network, runs the digital publication The Hill, and programs a handful of free, ad-supported streaming TV channels.
“Our broadcasting and sales divisions are streamlining their organizations to reduce our operating expenses and accelerate collaboration across the company,” a spokesperson for Nexstar said in a statement distributed to trade publications on Wednesday. “While it is difficult to make these sorts of changes, they will impact less than 2 percent of our workforce and allow us to focus on areas of growth for our viewers, partners, and customers.”
The spokesperson said the change was intended to help ensure “that Nexstar continues to thrive for years to come.”
The company didn’t say which business units were being targeted for cuts. Over the past few months, several executives have left the broadcaster, including Chief Revenue Officer Michael Strober and CW Network President Dennis Miller.
The cuts come after years of acquisitions, including Nexstar’s purchase of 75 percent of the CW Network from Paramount Global and Warner Bros Discovery and its subsequent decision to pursue live sports programming for the outlet.
Nexstar is also an aggressive pursuer of local television stations, and its latest mandate has been to acquire or otherwise effectuate partnerships with other companies so it can control the distribution of its CW Network programming.
At the same time, Nexstar has worked to build NewsNation into a cable news operation that can effectively rival larger outlets like the Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC. Nielsen ratings reviewed by The Desk showed NewsNation was the fastest-growing cable news channel in the first half of November, when cable news channels were saturated with coverage of the U.S. presidential election and its aftermath.
