Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2022 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone, and if you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Hilton Howell, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. As Lori mentioned, I am Hilton Howell, the Chairman and CEO of Gray Television. Thank you all for joining us on this Q1 2022 earnings call. As usual, with me today are Gray's executive officers, our president and co-CEO, Pat LaPlatney, our chief legal and development officer, Kevin Latek, our chief financial officer, Jim Ryan, and our chief operating officer, Bob Smith. We will begin this morning with a disclaimer that Kevin will provide.
Thank you, Hilton. Good morning, everyone. Gray uses its website as a key source of company information. The website address is www.gray.tv. We will file our quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the SEC later today. Included on the call may be a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, in particular broadcast cash flow, broadcast cash flow less corporate expenses, operating cash flow, free cash flow, Adjusted EBITDA, and certain leverage ratios. These metrics are not meant to replace GAAP measurements but are provided as supplements to assist the public in their analysis and valuation of our company. Included in our earnings release as well as on our website are reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the GAAP measures reported in our financial statements. Certain matters discussed in this call may include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, future operating results.
Those statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors that have been set forth in the company's most recent reports filed with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Now I turn the call to Hilton.
Thank you, Kevin. We are quite simply thrilled to be with you today to discuss our first full quarter as the nation's second-largest broadcast affiliate group owner. Quite simply, the company is firing on all cylinders. Our Q1 financial results exceeded our expectations, and we today are guiding to another great quarter in what will be a truly banner year for Gray Television. Once again, our earnings release this morning also confirms that our execution remains best in class. Our total revenue in the Q1 of 2022 was $827 million, which was an amazing 52% higher than the Q1 of 2021. Our total revenue blew past the high end of our guidance of $812 million for the quarter. Our net income in the Q1 was $49 million or $0.52 per fully diluted share.
That figure represents an 88% increase over the Q1 of 2021 on a dollar basis, and a 93% increase over the Q1 on a per share basis. Moreover, excluding transaction-related expenses and non-cash stock compensation, our adjusted net income would have been $55 million for the Q1 of this year, or $0.58 per fully diluted share. As you all know, our earnings release presents financial results according to GAAP as well as on our own defined combined historical basis. We refer to it as CHB, and it gives effects to both acquisitions and dispositions in order to provide more transparency on how our currently owned stations and businesses are performing compared to prior periods. Our results today are just as impressive on this combined historical basis.
In particular, we had guided that total revenue would increase from a low of 5% to a high of 8% over the prior year period on a CHB basis. Well, in fact, our company finished the Q1 of 2022 up 10%. On core advertising revenue, our stations finished the quarter up 4% on a CHB basis, in contrast to our anticipated range of between flat to 3% higher than the Q1 of 2021. Likewise, we exceeded Q1 2021's CHB numbers as well as our own guidance on retransmission consent revenue, political advertising revenue, and production company revenue. These revenue gains, as well as the expense savings reported in our release today, are the result of our peerless combination of top-rated local television stations and fantastic professional employees at every level of our company.
In August, we welcomed the Quincy Media Group into our fold, and in December, we welcomed the Meredith Television Group into our fold. The Quincy stations today are fully integrated into our company, and the revenues and expenses are noticeably better in just this very short time. Meanwhile, we have progressed about halfway through our integration of the Meredith stations. Those stations and the local teams are busy adding news, sales, and creative personnel, as well as technology and sales resources. Their financial results for the Q1 [crosstalk]
I gotta talk in about a minute, so if you could keep it quiet, that'd be great.
Their financial results for the Q1 more than met our expectations, and those expectations will certainly grow as we get more and more of the integration efforts behind us. In short, we have very good news to report, not just on the financial statements, but on the ground and in the trenches of all of our latest acquisitions. Looking ahead, we are today guiding to a combined core revenue and political revenue for the Q2 of between $435 million-$445 million. If we land just below the midpoint of our traditionally conservative guidance, Gray Television will break all its previous records for Q2 advertising revenue in the company's 100-year+ history, both on an as-reported and on a combined historical basis.
In closing, we look ahead with great excitement at a strong year for core revenue, for continued growth in retransmission revenues, for record-breaking political revenue around this important midterm election, and for growth in our emerging production and studio businesses. With the wind behind us and with more scale than ever before, Gray will achieve strong free cash flow that should enable us to delever quickly as we did following the Raycom acquisition in 2019. Indeed, with our very strong start to 2022 and our bright prospects for the balance of this year, we anticipate being able to fund our growth objectives for the year, as well as pay down a significant portion of our debt prior to year-end.
Naturally, as our strong free cash flow drives our leverage lower, we are actively increasing the equity value of our company that we expect will help our stock price recover to a level that better reflects the fact that our business is as strong as it has ever been and that our prospects have never been brighter. Next, I will turn the microphone over to our President and Co-CEO, Pat LaPlatney, who will address our ad revenues in more detail. Pat?
Thank you, Hilton. We are very happy with our ad sales performance in the Q1 . Despite the war in Europe, meaningful inflation, and continued headwinds in the auto category, Gray stations continue to operate at the top of their game. Hilton reviewed the impressive core revenue gains we posted in the Q1. There are many reasons for a 4% year-over-year growth in CHB core revenue across the group. We're making great progress on developing local direct business, especially in our newly acquired stations. Our new local direct business efforts have been a focal point for some time, and now we are writing between $9 million and $10 million per month of new local direct business. Throughout the Q1 and continuing today, we are concentrating on integrating the former Meredith stations as we did with the Quincy stations in the back half of last year.
We clearly inherited a lot of talent, talented sellers, and terrific managers from both companies. Between this talent and great resources, stations from both Meredith and Quincy are having great success with digital products that they can now offer our advertising clients in this. The skills they've acquired at our in-house sales training center are playing a large role in their success. It's clear that there will be revenue synergies in the months and years ahead as our digital resources and sales training roll through the former Meredith stations. Even though the automotive category is struggling, other categories are growing. In fact, the health category is pacing just slightly behind auto.
While that is good news and bad news to some degree, it's a clear victory for our in-house health vertical sales team and for our stations who have done outstanding work in developing this category. Our new travel and tourism team is also beginning to make meaningful contributions to our sales efforts. We also expect that contribution to grow dramatically in the months and years ahead. The gambling, home improvement, and legal categories also continue to grow. The services group, comprising financial, legal, and health, is continuing to post strong results and accounted for approximately 29% of our core revenue in Q1. While we all wish auto was stronger and we believe it will come back, this exercise in revenue diversification has been beneficial for Gray Television long term. Digital ad sales continue to grow in the double- digits.
In 19 markets, both large and small, our digital billing exceeds national billing now. As you probably have read, money is pouring into digital video, and we are well-positioned to take advantage with our Premion OTT sales partnership. We've seen digital video revenue grow dramatically over the last two years, and we do not see that growth slowing down in the foreseeable future. We continue to invest in digital sales training in what we believe to be the best digital sales force in the industry. Recently, we joined Hearst Television, Graham Media, and CoxReps in an investment in cash and resources in an ad sales software package called an ad sales service Matrix to facilitate the launch of its new media sales gateway named Admiral.
The gateway will be a sell side tool that provides both the infrastructure and workflows to automate converged advertising sales and further reduce the friction in broadcast advertising. For the past few weeks, we've been working on a rollout of Admiral across our stations. Through the amazing hard work of our sales support team, we expect to onboard all Gray stations on the system before the end of the quarter. This transition should provide more wind at our sails as we move into the second half of what will be a banner year for Gray Television. Next, Bob Smith will offer additional color on our station operations. Bob?
Thank you, Pat. We have never had such tough competition in our local markets from other broadcasters, digital companies, and new entrants. Nevertheless, our stations continue to offer the best value proposition for companies and campaigns who want to reach the largest possible audiences in local communities. Even in a slowing economy, our stations provide a superior value proposition compared to alternative advertising options. Our stations are operating at the top of their game, and they're only getting better and more efficient. Of course, our sales efforts will be nothing without our leading local news franchises. Since the beginning of this year, we have had a number of developments in this area. In February, we created the Gray Media Training Center in partnership with WLBT, our top-ranked NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi. The revolutionary media training program will prepare students for today's unique operating environment.
It will educate and train students who attend Mississippi colleges and universities with a focus on historically Black colleges and universities in the state. We believe this initiative will help us prepare students for a career in broadcasting and attract quality talent in a tight labor market. Over the past few weeks, we have accelerated and expanded our plans to add more local newscasts across our portfolio. In the past two months, three syndicated programs coincidentally came to an end. Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren, which we produced and distributed for two years, PeopleTV, which we inherited with the Meredith acquisition, and Right This Minute, a weekday entertainment program that we jointly own with some other broadcasters. In nearly all cases, our television stations replaced these programs with new, locally created, locally focused newscasts.
Through these moves, we are leveraging our local news gathering talents and resources in new ways that better serve our local communities and provide better opportunities for our local advertising clients to reach their customers and potential customers. After the close of the quarter in late April, the National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation announced the finalists for this year's coveted Service to America Awards. The Service to America Awards recognize outstanding community service by local broadcasters. We are humbled and honored that five of the six stations in small and medium market categories are owned by Gray Television. Congratulations to WMTV, WIS, WTOC, WBNG, and KWQC. Last week, our investigative unit called InvestigateTV was recognized with a First Place National Headliner Award for Collision Division. The investigation exposed how federal crash standards favor men, despite women being at higher risk for injury and death behind the wheel.
This investigation led to congressional hearings and a bill addressing this disparity that was enacted into law late last year. Two days ago, the Southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, NATAS, nominated our most recently acquired television station, Telemundo Atlanta, for six Emmy Awards for the 2021 calendar year. These nominations were made in the following areas, overall station excellence, news excellence, journalistic enterprise, hard news report, continuing coverage, and investigative reporting. We are thrilled to welcome Telemundo Atlanta into our portfolio of leading news stations. Taking a step back, we acquired Telemundo Atlanta on 1 April 2022 to serve as the cornerstone of our group of Telemundo-affiliated stations that we see as another growth engine for the company.
To that end, we are very excited to announce on Tuesday of this week that Gray will be launching the first ever local Telemundo-affiliated television station channels in 22 markets. When fully built out this year, our Telemundo station group will deliver Telemundo's top-tier programming with our local programming to more than 3.75 million Hispanics. We are very excited about our new partnership with Telemundo and the amazing opportunities ahead to leverage our news and sales resources to serve a greater portion of the local audiences and local businesses in our local communities. The expansion includes the upcoming launch of Telemundo Georgia, a new network that initially will distribute the signal of Telemundo Atlanta to in all Georgia markets. Over time, the individual markets will create and launch local content supported by the flagship Atlanta affiliate station.
Telemundo Georgia will be the first and only Spanish language media organization serving nearly all Hispanic residents throughout the state. This provides important and efficient avenues for advertisers to reach Spanish-speaking consumers across Georgia, especially political advertisers, who have a lot of reasons to reach this important part of the electorate in 2022. I now turn the call over to Kevin.
Thank you, Bob. Speaking of political advertisers, Gray Television is continuing to punch above its weight on political advertising. To put this in perspective, during the first two quarters of 2020, on a combined historical basis, our television stations sold $79 million in political ads. That remarkable feat in 2020 was fueled by presidential primary spending in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Super Tuesday states, all places where Gray has a big presence. Remember, too, that 2020's primary spending in late 2019 and early 2020 was supercharged by the supposedly irreplaceable spending from candidates Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.
As impressive as that $79 million in the first half of 2020 was, we expect to blow well past that figure in the first half of 2022. In particular, our Q1 political revenues of $26 million+ the $65 million-$70 million of political revenue in our Q2 guide will produce a first half political revenue figure of $91 million-$96 million. Therefore, even the low end of this range would be a 15% increase over the presidential primary fueled first half of 2020. Now for the full year, we anticipate political revenue of $575 million, which would be a 55% increase over the last midterm election year of 2018 on this combined historical basis.
It's better, however, to compare again to 2020, when our current station portfolio booked $652 million in political revenue. Roughly $192 million of that 2020 total came from presidential primaries, presidential general election, and the two Georgia Senate runoffs that began after election day. Consequently, our political guide of $575 million for full year 2022 represents a 25% increase over 2020's CHB political advertising revenue, excluding the presidential and Georgia runoff advertising in 2020. Without a doubt, political revenue is remarkable no matter how you look at it. I'll turn to the other good news now in our release. As you saw, we posted a strong Q1 growth in retransmission revenues at $393 million.
On a GAAP basis, retrans revenues increased a whopping 59% from the year earlier period. On a combined historical basis, retrans revenues increased 10% from the year earlier period. The retrans revenues exceeded our guidance range, in part due to the annual true up payments for prior periods that were booked in the Q1 . Looking forward, we anticipate retrans revenues of $385 million-$390 million for the Q2 , and we expect retrans revenues will exceed $1.5 billion for the full year of 2022. Thankfully, our subscriber counts continue to remain relatively stable.
In particular, our big four pay TV subscribers across our current portfolio of stations, including those we acquired from Meredith and Quincy last year, declined by less than 2% between the Q4 of 2020 and the Q4 of 2021. This concludes my remarks, and I turn the microphone to Jim Ryan.
Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. As mentioned earlier, we'll be filing our 10-Q a little later today. As we discussed on our Q4 call, and you will note in our presentation beginning Q1 2022, Gray no longer segregates local advertising revenue from national advertising revenues in our income statements. The local versus national distinction may be relevant for other broadcast companies who sell national revenue through a sales rep and sell local and regional ads through their own sales force. As you know, Gray does not use a national sales rep, and all of our sales are being conducted at the local level. The distinction between local and national for us is irrelevant, and we've retired it.
Hilton, Pat, Bob, and Kevin all covered the key highlights for the Q1, so I'll keep my remarks relatively brief and just try to recap them for everybody. First, on Q2 guidance, again, core advertising revenue we're expecting to be between $370 million and $375 million. Retransmission revenue of $385 million-$390 million. As Kevin just commented, our Q1 had some one-time only positive adjustments of about $5 million in our retrans number in Q1, which we do not expect to be repeated in Q2. Political advertising revenue for Q2 will be $65 million-$70 million. Production revenue between $10 million and $12 million. Total revenue, $846 million-$864 million.
Our operating expenses for Q2 are expected to be between $533 million and $537 million for broadcast, and that includes $226 million of reverse comp payments to the networks, approximately $1 million of non-cash stock comp, and $1 million of transaction-related expenses. Production companies will have about $12 million of expenses, and corporate expenses are expected to be between $30 million and $35 million, including $1 million of transaction-related expenses and about $5 million of non-cash stock comp. We're very pleased with our Q1 results. Total core revenue again was up 4% compared to 2021 on a combined historical basis. We were very pleased with the strong start to political, and obviously, you can see we have very strong expectations for political in Q2.
As mentioned earlier, the services group, which includes financial, legal, and medical, represented approximately 29% of our Q1 2022 core revenue. Gaming revenue for the Q1 was about $20 million. The Super Bowl contributed about $7 million, and the Winter Olympics contributed about $10 million. Our trailing eight-quarter operating cash flow at 3/31/2022 was $1.214 billion. Our principal amount of debt outstanding at the end of the quarter was $6.835 billion. Our cash on hand was $247 million. Our total leverage ratio, net of all cash, was 5.43x , which is down from our Q4 leverage ratio. First lien leverage ratio, net all cash, was 2.5x . To recap our expectations for the full year, 2021 combined historical.
To recap some metrics from 2021, so you can put in perspective with our expectations for 2022. Our 2021 combined historical net revenue was $3.15 billion. Our two-year blended average operating cash flow or two-year blended 2021 net revenue was $3.25 billion. Our operating cash flow at a combined historical basis in 2021 was about $1 billion, and our LTM operating cash flow at a combined historical basis was about $1.2 billion. Our 2021 free cash was $443 million. Our blended two-year average combined historical 2021 free cash was $626 million.
As we discussed in our Q4 call, we'll remind everybody today that for 2022, we expect cash interest of about $300 million, cash taxes of $190 million, routine capital expenditures of about $125 million, preferred dividends of $52 million, and required Term Loan D amortization of $15 million. Our routine dividend would be a little over $30 million. We're gonna reaffirm that we currently anticipate that our free cash flow before common dividends, acquisitions, investments, will exceed $800 million in 2022. Obviously, if political skews to the high side, that free cash number will skew accordingly higher. We're very well positioned starting 2022 and look forward to a very successful year. I'll now turn the call back to Hilton.
Thank you very much, Jim. Before I turn it over to the operator to ask for your questions, I just want to reach out to our station in Louisville and say congratulations on the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby tomorrow. We've received your photographs and are thrilled about what you're doing there in Louisville. Go after it. Operator, at this time, we'll open up for questions.
Thank you. Again as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question. Our first question is from Dan Kurnos from Benchmark. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks. Good morning. Super strong result. I guess maybe if you guys can, you know, we'll address the topic du jour just quickly, get it out of the way just in terms of what you're seeing around core. The 2Q CHB core guide looks pretty strong, relative to the fact that you guys are maybe some 50% higher on political than we would have anticipated at this point. Maybe if you could just talk a little bit initially, just color what you're seeing, macro, when you're talking booking windows, just anything, on that front would be a good start. Thanks.
I'll start off. As far as Q2 goes, as you said, we are pleased with where we're guiding in core. Especially May and June at current expectations, at current pace, look to be reasonably strong in the call it low to middle single- digit range. April was a little bit soft, but not alarmingly so. It was just a little bump in the road, and we're encouraged with positive pace in May and June. I'll let others comment on probably certainly in some markets, some political displacement already.
Yeah, I can jump in. This is Bob Smith. We are seeing some strong political in certain markets, and there has been some displacement. That being said, as Jim just mentioned, we're optimistic about May and June. Several categories are, as also mentioned, returning in the last 20 minutes, are pretty healthy. Automotive, as mentioned, is still a challenge and probably will be for a while, but we are making it up in other categories. And then as Pat mentioned, our new direct business, we're developing probably 2,000 new accounts, direct local accounts a quarter, on average, and that continues to grow. We think that'll increase as the year goes on.
Yeah. I think one category to highlight would be what we call entertainment, where we're seeing strong growth in Q2 . That's sort of local performance venues, state tourism boards, really healthy growth in that category, you know, coupled with all the others we talked about earlier. It's a, you know, pretty healthy quarter.
Got it. That's super helpful. On the aforementioned political, I think I'd be lying if I say I wasn't hoping for some more colorful words from you this time around, but Kevin did his best. Just you know, some thoughts on, you know, what if Roe v. Wade ends up getting overturned. We've heard that there's already been a ton of money coming in on issue. Can you just kind of talk about the balance between, you know, whether it's senatorial versus issue and where you might be seeing potential for outperformance in some of those verticals?
Let me just say we have no idea what's gonna happen on the decision or politics. What is known is in the last three days, there are PACs and candidates on both sides that have had fundraising records. The leak has galvanized folks on both sides. If we had this call last week, we would have said the interest in the campaign and fundraising is just as strong as we have seen in 2020 and higher than we'd seen in prior years, and that bodes well for a strong political season. The primary in Ohio was obviously you know. There were a lot of intense voters there and a lot of ads.
Clearly, we're gonna see we think that the leak is only gonna focus more people on the elections, and that's gonna drive more fundraising. As we've already seen, that will continue. As you've heard me say many times, no campaign manager wants to end a campaign with money left in the bank. They've raised the money, they gotta spend it. We couldn't possibly be more specific in how it impacts other than to say it probably is focusing people to get involved, donate money, and that's good for political advertising.
Dan, I don't know if I have colorful words for this, but one thing that Jim has always said on these calls is that 90% of our political revenue [crosstalk] Sorry, I misspoke. 50% of our political revenue comes in Q4, and we are seeing a much earlier than ever in history beginning of political ads. I mean, we're having ads for 2022 that began in Q4 of 2021 and have certainly occurred, as you've seen with our numbers, through the Q1 . You know, currently, they're booming. It changes from state to state, but the primary advertising is very strong. Both parties are very competitive and enthusiastic. Both have raised lots of money.
Gray has done something with our acquisitions that I think positions us even better because Bob and his teams locally, we have been adding news and local news everywhere, and he mentioned that in his formal comments. What's important about that is that the venue that political advertisers prefer to use to reach voters that might be the deciding votes. We have more and more local news that they will have a position and inventory to buy political ads. I think it's gonna be a gargantuan year in this midyear election, and I think it will likely rival, if not exceed, any previous presidential election.
All right. That made me feel better, Hilton. Thank you. That's definitely.
All right.
[crosstalk] much more colorful.
Good, Dan.
I'll let you go with this. You know, I know there was a true-up in Q1. You know, we've heard some pretty positive things out of the vMVPDs picking up some slack, just if there's any update on your thoughts on that retrans later.
Nope. No updated thoughts.
That's what I figured. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.
Thank you, Dan.
Thank you. Our next question is from Jim Goss from Barrington Research. Your line is open.
Thank you. I was going to ask about that earlier comment regarding the integration of the Quincy properties and about halfway through Meredith and that comment that related to the transition of some of the news coverage. Aside from what you just said about the political importance, I wondered if you might talk about, say, how many syndicated programs might be replaced by local news efforts, or how many hours, and what might be the typical impact on ad revenues and syndicated cost reductions in making that transition. You might relate it to what you've just experienced and how it might have helped inflate some of the recent results.
I can take that one [crosstalk]
Go ahead, Pat.
Go ahead, Bob. No [crosstalk]
Go ahead, Pat. That's fine.
All right. That's fine. No, as I said, you know, Jim, we have recently replaced People, the syndicated show that Meredith was producing with news in a number of our largest markets. While I can't quantify the effect, I would tell you it'll be material, not only on the cost-saving side, but also on the increased ad revenue, given that we're rolling out a number of newscasts in those time periods. You know, Hilton mentioned this, and Bob did, too, in his formal comments. We're putting more news in, it seems like, every week. Because that's not only helping us serve our communities, but also good on the business side of what we do. I see that continuing long term, and happy to turn it back to you, Bob or Hilton, for more comments there.
Yeah. I would just add that the one point that it did not inflate our Q1 because a lot of those shows, as I mentioned, ended 1 April 2022. That came after the fact. However, our overall goal is, we believe, in localism in a big way. Whenever we can replace syndication, often a lot of syndication is poorly performing and put local news in there, it is a win-win for us. We have all the local avails inventory, and we think it serves our communities well. We have in some markets, and I think I have mentioned this on prior calls, but we have some syndication-free stations right now that have no syndication at all, and it is all local content.
Charlotte's one of them. Louisville is one of them. We're almost there in Hartford. That's a long-term goal, is to have less emphasis on syndicated programming and more emphasis on local news, and we'll continue to grow in that area.
Okay. Is it fair to think you also benefit in terms of saving the cost of the syndicated programming by whatever you wind up spending with what you produce in addition to the ad revenue benefits you get?
Yeah, absolutely. Yes, we do.
Okay. The other thing you mentioned, you had cut back on several programs you were syndicating, the Greta Van Susteren that was your own, plus a couple from Meredith, I'm guessing. Are you sort of getting out of that, whatever strategy you might have had? I know Greta Van Susteren was sort of wading in the waters a little bit, but. Or is that just specific to those particular programs?
Hi, Jim, it's Kevin. These were all coincidental and sort of coincidental endings that were not planned. Greta's show was an experiment. We said that when we launched it two years ago. We wanted to try a national Sunday talk show out of Washington. We're very happy with the way the show was produced. We're happy with the content. The guests were spectacular. The show was really well done. It just, you know, it didn't quite find the audience that we had hoped for. Those Sunday shows ended 1 April 2022. Greta's now on our air actually more often than she used to be. She's able to do more talk backs and less time spent preparing for Sunday shows.
It really was a win-win. The stations got back a half hour on Sundays that they're generally able to put local news in. PeopleTV was a show that was produced by Meredith that we inherited. It too didn't get the traction we had hoped for, Meredith historically had hoped for. That came to an end, again, coincidentally, on April 1. Right This Minute, as Bob mentioned in his remarks, that's been around for a number of years. That was Raycom, and some other folks put that show together, gosh, I'm forgetting now, for five, six or so years ago, Pat?
11 years ago, actually.
Okay. Yeah. Then that too just it kinda ran its course. There was no master plan, Jim, to kind of strategize here. It was, as I hope you guys have seen from Gray, we tend to try things, and we hope we fail fast when they're not working. Sometimes things work for a while, and they stop working, and we have to fess up and make decisions and move on. We don't wanna let things that aren't working continue to take our time and resources. As Bob mentioned, ending a syndicated show and adding local news is a win-win for us. As you mentioned, if it eliminates the cost, it's really a triple win for us.
Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Jim.
Thank you. Our next question is from Aaron Watts from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on. I just wanted to quickly follow up on an earlier question on the ad outlook. 2Q is clearly very solid and political flowing in. Do you have any good visibility beyond 2Q on whether the current economic backdrop, the consumer confidence, concerns about a macro slowdown are yet leaking into ad buying decisions and commitments? I suppose this is more pointed at what you're seeing a little further out or beyond 2Q.
Aaron, we as usual, other than the immediate quarter in front of us, and this has been traditional in the business for a long time now, we really don't have a lot of visibility. Business tends to get placed quarter by quarter. No, we would be no better, you know, estimating or forecasting what the overall economy is gonna be doing and the economies in our markets in Q3 and Q4 than anybody else. We remain optimistic. We're pleased with the results from Q1, what we expect for Q2, so we don't see any big red flags, but we don't have a ton of visibility either.
Omi, this is Kevin. I'm gonna just accentuate something Pat said on the call. You know, we just went through a quarter with a major war in Ukraine and historical inflation, and yet the consumer in our market and the businesses who advertise in our markets have remained really strong. Despite the macro headwinds that are out there, our business remains strong. You saw it not just in Q1 results, you see it in our Q2 guide. We don't know what the future's gonna hold in Q3 or Q4, but we're cautiously optimistic because we're doing fine despite some real pressures out there in the macro side.
Yep, fair point. Okay. I apologize if I missed this, but, you know, we've heard about some increased rates of churn from the MVPDs. You've always seemed to trend a little bit better in the past than some of the market averages. Can you just speak to what you've been seeing from your sub base of late?
Yeah, we said we look at the full year from Q4 of 2020 into the Q4 of 2021, our total Big Four pay TV sub count declined by less than 2%.
Okay, great. Just one more, and I appreciate the time. Just given some of the continued pressures on network broadcast viewership, prime time specifically, curious how that's impacting your business or decisions with ad clients. I appreciate that prime ads are not a main driver of Gray's revenues, but from a perception standpoint and considering lead-in, lead-out strength, network programming trends, I imagine can matter indirectly from a viewership or sales perspective. Anything you can kind of give on color there, and maybe also if you could speak to your, how your local news ratings are performing of late relative to prime?
This is Bob Smith. I'll take that. Prime is less and less important really every year. We don't depend on the networks. Local news, as we mentioned a few minutes ago, is where we drive our revenue from. Prime time, you're looking at about 12% of our revenue in network prime. So it's nothing like it was say, you know, 10 or 20 years ago. And again, that goes back to our emphasis on developing local news content. 50% of our revenue comes in local news.
Okay.
As far as the ratings go, the ratings are holding up. I can tell you that. As you know, we have so many number one stations, and they continue to perform very well.
Okay. Thank you again.
Thank you, Aaron.
Thank you. Our next question is from Steven Cahall from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Thanks. First, maybe Hilton, just on the political commentary that you made. I think you said that now you expect political to maybe be above the 2020 level. I don't know if that's included in your current free cash flow guidance or if that prognostication would be upside to free cash flow guidance. Maybe just a little bit of help there.
No, Steven, that's not included in any of our free cash flow guidance. That's just aspirational because we see a lot of political stuff that's starting earlier and earlier every political cycle.
Steven, our guidance of $575 million remains unchanged.
Yep. Got it. Okay.
Again, I'll point out, you know, that's you're running about 25% better than 2020 when we back out the presidential, which is obviously not happening now. You back out the Georgia Senate runoff from November, December of 2020. We take out those things which you get an apples-to-apples comparison. Our guide is already 20%, or say 25% better than 2020.
Gotcha. On the Telemundo deal that you announced, could you just talk about what the upside could look like to. I assume those are, you know, MyNetworkTV and CW stations that you have some conversion opportunities. I'm guessing those don't really generate much in the way of retrans at the moment. Maybe the ad sales are better as well. Can you just kinda help us think about what the value impact could be from your larger Telemundo deal?
Yeah. We are not converting it. We're not dropping any affiliation. We were able to add Telemundo in 22 new markets this year, by adding an additional channel to stations we already own. Over the last several months, we've been quietly buying low power TV stations in our markets, and folks have been wondering what we were gonna do with them. The plan has been to buy some low power TV stations, to literally serve as a Telemundo affiliates for these markets. Because they're low power, they tend to cover smaller areas than full power. Some markets, we have to have two low powers to cover the DMA. We're not dropping anything in favor of Telemundo. Telemundo is additive.
As we said, we're gonna begin with the national feed, and in some markets we'll have local news and local insertion of commercials. There will be many that never have that. There will be many that will start off with a national feed or the Atlanta, Georgia, or the Atlanta feed throughout the Georgia markets. Then as the market can support local ads and local news, we'll convert the station to more of a local feed. This is not gonna be a material driver, but we think it is gonna be a growth engine. It's only gonna help our. We think it'll help our stations local ad sales, help us leverage our, you know, what we do with sales and what we do with news to reach a greater part of the audience.
Not material to the company, you know, but probably material to some of the markets where we're adding Telemundo.
Thank you. Maybe just lastly, Hilton, I think at the end of the last call, you talked about maybe being in a position to look at some share repurchases by the end of this calendar year. It sounds like you're incrementally bullish since then. Is that still kinda the same, where if the November cycle hits the way you think it could, then that outlook is still possible?
Those are always opportunities for our board to consider, and we, you know, we look at it every quarter. We will be looking at that as we see sort of the course of 2022 sort of turn out. It's more likely than not if the optimistic side of the year turns out that we will see something along those lines, and we'll just see what our board comes up with. Yes, it is certainly an opportunity.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Steven.
Thank you. Again, if you have any questions, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We have a question from Alan Gould, from Loop Capital. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking the question. I've got a couple here. First, Pat, could you drill down a little bit more on digital? The numbers seem pretty impressive. If you quantify, for example, how much of your core revenue is coming digital?
It's not gonna give you the exact number, but it is in the teens. You know, I think that's a pretty solid number, and it's growing. It continues to grow quickly on what is now a relatively significant base. We're pretty happy with our efforts there.
Okay. Jim or Hilton, could you give us a little more insight on the Assembly Atlanta project? How much you think capital expenditures are gonna be for the year? I recognize that there's, you know, a shortage of pre-production space for all the content that's being developed, you know, what's the revenue opportunities there as well?
Well, we don't expect to see a large amount of capital expenditures there, just enough to get our studios up and going.
Okay. The $30 million that you spent in the Q1 , would that be a run rate for the year?
It'll be around $100 million, but in later years, the CID, which is unique there, will be issuing bonds that are separate apart from anything on our balance sheet, and that will offset what we have here because the property itself where the studios are is uniquely benefited by the tax-free bond capacity that we have there. Before the end of the years, those bonds will reduce the capital expenditure for creating these studios.
Okay. Thanks. And Kevin, could you just give us some sense in general on the tone of reverse comp discussions? I think the thought was that the networks wanted to raise the prices prior to the new NFL contract.
Yeah.
I've heard some rumblings that they're asking for more again. Can you just give us some sense of the tone there?
Yeah. What I said on the last call was that we believe that Gray, Meredith and Quincy had large step-ups in the last two rounds of reverse comp or network affiliation negotiations as the networks prepared for the NFL renewal conversation, and that going forward, the increases would be more muted than what we had seen in the recent rounds. You know, I can't tell you what the industry's hearing overall because we're not really in those discussions right now. We've got some up at the end of this year. We'll have those conversations later on, but that's our general sense of where things are at.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. There are no further questions in the queue. Do you have any closing comments?
Thank you, operator. I wanna thank everyone for joining us today. It's been a fantastic quarter. We expect a fantastic Q2 and an even better full year results. We look forward to talking to you at our next quarterly report. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.