Who Owns Nexstar

Nexstar 🐔🐔🐔🐔

Capitulation Rank: Obeying
Category: Broadcasting & Entertainment
Market Cap: $5.21 billion

Nexstar Chairman and CEO Perry Sook sees a bright future for the broadcast giant as long as the company stays in Trump’s good graces. During a December 2024 conference in New York, Sook spoke favorably of the prospect that a Trump FCC would eliminate the 39-percent national cap on TV-station ownership and get rid of other regulatory safeguards preventing the conglomerate from expanding its already wide-reaching control over local-broadcast news. “We think the prospects of actually achieving deregulation are probably better than they have been at any point in the recent past,” he said. Given these views, it’s no coincidence that Sook also serves as the board chair of the National Association of Broadcasters, the powerful lobbying group for the local television and radio sector.

Immediately following the 2024 election, Sook said he planned to eliminate “activist journalism” in favor of “fact-based unbiased local news.” We know what that means: editorial capitulation in exchange for regulatory favors. Sook told Nexstar investors that he plans “to move with a sense of urgency” and push for federal policies that will help pave a path for further consolidation.

Nexstar supposed commitment to objective, fact-based journalism was called into question when the company’s D.C. publication, The Hill, fired a reporter whose reporting angered Trump.  To further grease the skids for mergers and acquisitions, the broadcaster in April ordered most of its 160+ local stations to air segments during local newscasts encouraging viewers to write the FCC and demand the agency loosen broadcast-ownership limits.

And sure enough, by August Nextsar appeared so confident that a Trump FCC will trash a national cap on the audience reach of a single broadcaster that it sped past the legal limit (39 percent national reach) in a bid to merge with a major competitor: The Wall Street Journal reported that Nexstar is floating a proposal to unite with TEGNA, giving the resulting conglomerate control over nearly 250 local TV stations.

Sept. 2025 update: Nexstar earns fourth chicken for muzzling Jimmy Kimmel

In the wake of the September murder of Charlie Kirk, many on the right took to social media to weaponize anything involving Kirk that didn’t paint him as a great American crusader for free speech (which is highly questionable). They seized on Kimmel’s somewhat innocuous comments about the political motivations of Kirk’s alleged shooter.

FCC Chairman Carr picked up on the chatter and issued a threat to media companies that either produced or aired Kimmel’s program. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said to the companies, explicitly indicating that the FCC would take up action against the likes of Disney and Nexstar for continuing to produce and air Kimmel’s show.

And like clockwork, Nexstar soon announced it would preempt Kimmel’s program. Soon after, Disney — which owns ABC —  decided to suspend Kimmel’s program. Mega-broadcaster Sinclair jumped on the big-media bandwagon, pulling the program from its ABC affiliates.

Following a forceful public outcry, Disney reversed its decision allowing the program to be aired, but both Nexstar and Sinclair are holding out. Nexstar’s Trump-friendly stance has earned it an additional chicken. Prior to this episode, we ranked the broadcast conglomerate as a three-chicken capitulator. It’s now four-chicken obedient (🐔🐔🐔🐔). 

DEI Doublespeak:

DEI is not explicitly stated as a Nexstar corporate principle. However, the company once claimed to work with “diversity-focused” organizations to help it recruit diverse talent. That all changed by May 2025, when it emerged that the company had deleted references to DEI policies and practices from its corporate website and social-media accounts. And it’s not as though Nextar executives ever practiced what they once preached: 75 percent of management is white and 61 percent is male.

What It Owns:

Broadcast TV (including 183 TV stations it owns in 115 geographic markets and an additional 18 stations it operates under shared-services agreements); broadcast and cable networks (including Antenna TV, The Cooking Channel [31 percent], The CW, Food Network [31 percent], NewsNation and Rewind TV); publishing (The Hill)

Money & Influence Game:

Nexstar paid lobbyists $1,170,000 in 2024, and Nexstar employees made $442,119 in contributions to political candidates (2024 cycle). (SOURCE: Center for Responsive Politics)